Tax

Estate planning for women

No one likes talking about estate planning. It’s fraught with emotion and can be uncomfortable—after all, it anticipates someone’s death. And women are traditionally even more reticent on the topic than men, preferring to leave the unpleasant details to a spouse or partner. But this is changing, fast. Estate planning is more complex than ever, […]

By Michelle Munro |May 1, 2010

6 min read

Tax News

2010 tax filing tips

April 30th is the deadline for your clients to file their tax returns. The following is a top ten list of tax filing tips you can review with your clients to ensure they’re paying the least amount of tax possible. 1. Home Renovations If there was a year to make home improvements, 2009 was the […]

April 20, 2010

6 min read

Tax News

Coming to terms with the HST

This past holiday season, the kids received a DVD of heritage-era cartoons, not the ones with either of the famous big-eared rodents, but instead a collection of fractured fairy tales. One in particular caught my attention – a tongue-in-cheek version of the story of the ant and the grasshopper. You’ll recall the original pitted the […]

April 13, 2010

4 min read

Tax News

Taxing foreign dividends

Canadian resident investors who hold U.S.-based (or other foreign-based) mutual funds in their non-registered accounts should pay close attention to the potentially negative tax consequences arising from the fact these funds are not considered pass-through type vehicles under Canadian law when it comes to the tax nature of their distributions. Investor Donald Ian Moyes learned […]

April 9, 2010

3 min read

Maximizing the TFSA

In 2009 Canada finally caught up with many of the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries’ use of tax-preferred accounts to stimulate domestic savings. The U.S. introduced the Roth Individual Savings Plan (Roth IRA) in 1997 and the U.K. debuted the Individual Savings Plan (ISA) in 1998—the product that’s most similar to our […]

6 min read

Maximizing the TFSA

6 min read

Income splitting in the TFSA era

This Advisor.ca Special Report is sponsored by: The practice of income splitting has been around for decades. Simply put, it’s the process of shifting income recognition from someone in a high tax bracket to someone in a low bracket. And, most often it’s carried out between spouses. With the implementation of the tax-free savings account […]

April 6, 2010

4 min read

Provinces crack down on aggressive tax planning

This Advisor.ca Special Report is sponsored by: On the surface, inter-provincial tax planning appears pretty simple—clients should assume they’ll pay tax on any income or disposed assets based on the rates of the province they live in. But wealth management strategies tend to be more complex than that, especially if there are ways to avoid […]

4 min read

Home business balancing act

This Advisor.ca Special Report is sponsored by: Economic recessions, painful though they may be, are the cradles of creativity. As people lose their jobs, many will finally embark on a long-held dream of self-employment. The allure of setting their own hours and reaping the rewards of their hard work drives many to start their own […]

5 min read

Tax credits: Use them or lose them

This Advisor.ca Special Report is sponsored by: Clients often wonder whether it makes sense to save up their eligible tax credits—like those for charitable donations—over several years and claim them all at once. Unless they’re not paying tax at all, the answer to that question is usually no: if they have them today, they should […]

2 min read