Proactive Canadian Tax Planning
Year-round Canadian tax planning that lowers lifetime tax — not just this year's tax. For business owners, incorporated professionals, investors, and families.
Tax preparation is backward-looking; tax planning is forward-looking
Tax preparation is the work of reporting last year’s transactions accurately on this year’s return. Tax planning is the work of structuring next year’s and the next ten years’ transactions so that less tax is paid in the first place. The single biggest source of unnecessary tax for Canadian business owners and high-income professionals is not under-reported income or missed deductions — it is structural decisions made years ago that can no longer be reversed cost-effectively.
BOMCAS Canada provides proactive tax planning as either an integrated component of an ongoing accounting engagement or as a standalone advisory project. The work is forward-looking, modeled in multi-year scenarios, and aimed at minimizing total lifetime tax across the corporation, the family, the estate, and any related entities.
Who tax planning is for
- Incorporated business owners approaching $100,000+ of retained corporate earnings annually
- Incorporated professionals (medical, dental, legal, engineering) optimizing pay structure
- Investors with substantial capital gains or stock option and RSU exposure
- Families with multiple income earners using trusts and family corporations
- Retirees and pre-retirees coordinating CPP, OAS, RRSP/RRIF, TFSA, and non-registered drawdown
- Business owners planning succession or sale using estate freezes, family trusts, and Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption multiplication
- Real estate investors considering corporate vs personal vs trust ownership
- Canadians with substantial foreign assets needing T1135 compliance and treaty positioning
What tax planning engagements typically include
- Multi-year salary vs dividend modelling for owner-managers
- RRSP, TFSA, FHSA contribution optimization integrated with corporate retention strategy
- Estate freeze structuring (in coordination with corporate and tax counsel) to cap personal estate exposure and shift future growth to the next generation
- Family trust analysis with TOSI-aware income-splitting opportunities (limited but still real in specific cases)
- Section 85 rollover analysis for transferring assets into a corporation tax-deferred
- Section 86 and section 51 reorganizations for share-capital restructuring
- Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption (LCGE) optimization — the current LCGE is approximately $1.25 million indexed annually for qualified small business corporation shares
- LCGE multiplication strategies using family trusts holding shares
- Purification of corporations holding excess passive assets before a planned sale
- Holding company structures for inter-corporate dividend flow and creditor protection
- Charitable giving strategies including gifts of publicly listed securities (eliminates capital gains tax on the donated security)
- Retirement income drawdown sequencing to minimize OAS clawback and maximize after-tax income
- Estate planning coordination with wills, powers of attorney, and life insurance
Why tax planning saves more than tax preparation
A well-prepared T1 or T2 can save a few thousand dollars compared to a sloppy preparation. A well-structured business and family plan can save hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime. The numbers are not close. The challenge is that tax planning requires planning — it has to be done before the transactions happen, not after. A business sold without a pre-sale estate freeze cannot be retroactively planned. A family corporation paid out as a single shareholder cannot retroactively use a family trust. Retirement drawdown decisions made without modelling cannot be undone.
Frequently asked questions
When should I think about an estate freeze?
Is family income splitting still possible after TOSI?
What Canadian businesses commonly miss about this service
Across the hundreds of Canadian businesses we work with, the same handful of issues come up repeatedly. Many small business owners delay engaging professional accounting until a crisis: a CRA review letter, an unfiled GST/HST return demand, a denied bank loan because financial statements aren't ready, or a Notice of Reassessment that arrived weeks ago. By the time we are first contacted, the cost to fix the problem is often several times what proper ongoing accounting would have cost from the start. Proactive engagement is dramatically cheaper than reactive cleanup.
The Canadian tax landscape also changes constantly. Recent changes that affect most Canadian taxpayers include the 2023 anti-flipping rule (residential real estate sold within 365 days is automatically business income, not capital gain); the Underused Housing Tax (UHT-2900 annual filing requirement for many corporations, partnerships, and trusts holding residential property even when no tax is owing — with $5,000 to $10,000 per-property failure-to-file penalties); the Quebec QST joint registration changes since 2021; the post-2018 Tax on Split Income (TOSI) rules that effectively eliminated casual income splitting through family dividends; the post-2021 $200,000 stock option vesting limit on the 50% deduction for options granted by non-CCPCs; the CSRS 4200 Compilation Engagement standard replacing the older Notice to Reader engagement; and ongoing CRA increased scrutiny on pre-construction assignments, short-term rental businesses, and cash businesses.
How BOMCAS Canada delivers this service
Every engagement begins with a written, fixed-fee engagement letter signed before any work is performed. The engagement letter describes exactly what is in scope, what deliverables you will receive, when those deliverables are due, what your monthly or project fee is, and what (if anything) is outside scope. This eliminates the hourly-billing surprise that most accounting clients fear. The only time we use hourly billing is for genuinely unpredictable items such as CRA audit response or complex one-off projects — and even then we agree to a maximum cap before starting.
Once the engagement letter is signed, you e-sign the CRA authorization (RC59 for businesses or AUT-01 for individuals), and we onboard you to the encrypted client portal with multi-factor authentication. All document exchange flows through the portal — no emailing of sensitive financial documents. Meetings happen by video conference or phone at times that work for you, including outside normal business hours when needed.
Our Canadian tax compliance philosophy
BOMCAS Canada is structured around four operating principles:
- Tell the truth. If a tax position is aggressive, we say so. If a deduction will not survive a CRA review, we say so. If the engagement is going to cost more than originally quoted because the scope changed, we say so before doing the work.
- Bill what we said we would bill. No surprise invoices. No scope-creep billing. If something legitimately changes scope, we discuss it and re-quote before doing the additional work.
- Answer the phone. One-business-day response standard on client communications during normal business hours. No voicemail backlogs.
- Specialize. Canadian tax and accounting is too complex to be a generalist. We do not do US-only tax, UK tax, or any other foreign jurisdiction in isolation. We are Canadian. Our cross-border work is always anchored by deep Canadian compliance.
What ongoing engagement with BOMCAS Canada looks like
For most clients, the ongoing relationship is structured around predictable monthly deliverables. For an incorporated small business client, that typically includes: monthly cloud bookkeeping with full bank and credit card reconciliation; quarterly or annual GST/HST returns prepared and filed; monthly payroll for owner-managers and any employees, with CRA source deduction remittances; year-end Compilation Engagement (CSRS 4200) financial statements; T2 corporate income tax return; owner-manager T1 personal tax return (and spouse where applicable); annual salary-vs-dividend optimization with written recommendation; unlimited email and phone support during business hours; one quarterly check-in call to review numbers and discuss the business; and CRA correspondence handling for routine review letters.
For a personal tax client, the ongoing engagement includes: annual T1 preparation; any required Quebec TP-1 (for Quebec residents); CRA pre-assessment and post-assessment review response when CRA requests additional documentation; Notice of Assessment reconciliation; and proactive tax planning conversations during the year about RRSP, TFSA, and FHSA contributions, major life events (marriage, kids, retirement, real estate), and any planned business or investment changes.
Frequently asked questions about engaging BOMCAS Canada
How do I get started?
Are your fees fixed or hourly?
Can I switch from my current accountant?
How are documents exchanged?
Do you work with my industry?
Why Canadian businesses choose specialized accounting over generalist accounting
The Canadian tax and accounting landscape has become significantly more complex over the past decade. The 2018 TOSI rules, the 2021 changes to stock option taxation, the 2022 mandatory reporting changes for trusts, the 2023 anti-flipping rule, the Underused Housing Tax, the changes to the small business deduction phase-out for passive investment income, the new CSRS 4200 Compilation Engagement standard, the continued expansion of digital sales tax rules, and the ongoing post-COVID CRA focus on cash businesses and unreported income have all required accountants to specialize more deeply. A generalist firm trying to cover personal tax, corporate tax, US tax, real estate, trusts, cross-border, and every industry vertical inevitably falls behind on the depth of expertise that any one client needs.
BOMCAS Canada is structured deliberately to maintain depth: we are Canadian-only by design; we work in industries where we have genuine specialized experience; we maintain ongoing professional education in Canadian tax law; we use Canadian-experienced staff at every level; and we coordinate with specialized partners (US-licensed cross-border, legal counsel for corporate restructuring, audit-engagement licensed practitioners) where required rather than trying to handle everything in-house.
Talk to a Canadian accountant
Call 780-667-5250 or submit the contact form. We respond within one business day and provide a fixed written quote before any work begins.