Common Estate and Tax Planning Issues

Over the years, I have reviewed many individuals’ financial affairs. Most people have their affairs somewhat in order, but there are typically still some issues to be considered or holes to be filled. Today, I list some of the most common issues and gaps.

Estate Issues

The most common estate planning issues I have observed relate to wills, powers of attorney, estate documentation and insurance. I discuss these below.

 

Wills

Wills always seem to have multiple issues and errors of omission when I review them. These five are the most common:

1. No Secondary Will – Depending upon your province of residence, a secondary will can be used to reduce the probate taxes due upon your death. This would most typically apply to shares you own in private companies and other personal items. It is my understanding that Ontario and British Columbia are the two main provinces where secondary wills are used, so check-in with your advisor if you live in a province other than Ontario or B.C.

2. Old or Dead Executors - As many people do not update their wills on a regular basis, I have often found their executors have passed away or they are very old (if your children are not your executors). You may want to review your executor selection and ensure you have at least one “youngish” executor.

3. All the Children are Executors – Keeping with the executor theme, many people have all their children as executors. I suggest that if you can finesse this with your children, in some cases it is better to only have one or two of your financial savvy children as executors, to avoid the estate being bogged down. This is not always practical given family dynamics, but is more efficient and can often reduce sibling friction.

4. Individual Bequests are Missing – Estate lawyer Charles Ticker notes in his book “Bobby Gets Bubkes: Navigating the Sibling Estate Fight that one of the biggest issues children have post-mortem, is where a parent had promised a child a certain personal item, be it jewelry, art, purse etc. and it is not reflected in the will. Parents, make your will consistent with your promises.

5. Blended Family Issues – Blended family issues can be so complicated, there is sometimes “paralysis by analysis” and they are just ignored. In this blog post I wrote in June 2020, I note that estate planning is complicated enough in a first marriage; second or third marriages multiply the risks and complexity. You may want to read the wills and estate planning sections of this blog post on blended families.

Powers Of Attorney

The two most common issues I come across with Powers of Attorney "(POA) are:

1. They are often not done!

2. The personal healthcare POA is out of date and does not reflect the significant health care issues that should be considered from extraordinary health measures to mental capacity (see this blog post) to assisted death.

Estate not Documented

I have seen many estates with no documentation in respect to the assets that constitute the estate and where the assets are located. I wrote about this a couple weeks ago, so I will not re-iterate. Here is the link to the blog post.

Insurance

Most people dislike paying insurance. However, parents often have family legacy assets they wish to keep in the family such as cottages, rental properties, family businesses etc. I have seen several instances where these legacy assets must be sold by the estate or to keep these assets in the family, excess taxes are paid as a work around solution. Often, life insurance, typically permanent insurance, such as Universal or Whole life would have made financial and tax sense and emotional sense (where the parent wanted a legacy asset to remain in the family).

I discuss many other uses of insurance for estate planning purposes in this blog post including the most popular, being life insurance to cover an estate tax liability on death.

Income Tax Issues

Capital Dividend Account

The capital dividend account (“CDA”) is a cumulative tax account that tracks certain amounts (most commonly the non-taxable portion of capital gains) that are not taxable to a Canadian Private Corporation and may be distributed tax-free to the company’s shareholders. See this detailed blog post I wrote on the subject.

Over the years, I have often seen this account not tracked or overlooked. A brief discussion of your corporation’s CDA balance should be part of your annual discussion with your accountant to ensure that you are not leaving any tax-free money on the table.

Charitable Donation Tax Efficiency

I have written several times (the last time being this blog) that many people do not maximize the tax benefits of their donations. If you plan to make a charitable donation and you own marketable securities with unrealized capital gains, it is far more tax-efficient to donate the securities in lieu of cash. This is because the capital gain on the security is not subject to tax when donated. For example, if you own shares of Bell Canada with a cost of $1,000 and a fair market value of $5,000, you would have to pay capital gains tax on the $4,000 capital gain when sold. However, if you donate the shares, the capital gain is deemed to be nil and you still get the donation tax credit.

Where you have a corporation and own marketable securities, it is even more tax-efficient to make a corporate donation, as the capital gain is eliminated and the capital gain gets added to the CDA account discussed above.

Unfunded TFSA

I find it very surprising how many people still have unfunded or partially funded Tax-Free Savings Accounts (“TFSAs”). These accounts allow you to grow your money tax-free and provide substantial flexibility in using and replenishing the account.

In the early days of TFSAs, the contribution limits were not large and people did not want the hassle of opening the account. However, as of Jan 1, 2022, the contribution limit for a TFSA is now $81,500. So, if you have not contributed, get going. If you have contributed haphazardly, check your balance with the CRA and get caught-up.

Capital Loss Utilization

I often see people pay tax on capital gains that is unnecessary, as they could have sold securities that had unrealized losses to reduce the gain and the related tax.

As 2022 has been a tough year in the markets, you may want to undertake some tax-loss selling before the end of the year. I will have my annual tax-loss selling blog in a couple weeks which is very detailed to assist in your tax-loss selling planning.

Estate Freeze

As per my blog Estate Freeze -A Tax Solution for the Succession of a Small Business undertaking an estate freeze in the right circumstances is often a great way to defer a families tax liability to the next generation. However, not everyone agrees as per this blog Are Estate Freezes the Wrong Solution for Family Business Succession?

I am a proponent of using an estate freeze where it fits a families needs. Over the last two years I have seen three estates that caused tax havoc for families that could easily have been minimized with an estate freeze several years ago.

Hopefully you and your advisors have already considered most of the issues discussed above. If not, you may wish to “clean-up” any holes in your planning and ensure the efficiency of your estate and tax planning.

This site provides general information on various tax issues and other matters. The information is not intended to constitute professional advice and may not be appropriate for a specific individual or fact situation. It is written by the author solely in their personal capacity and cannot be attributed to the accounting firm with which they are affiliated. It is not intended to constitute professional advice, and neither the author nor the firm with which the author is associated shall accept any liability in respect of any reliance on the information contained herein. Readers should always consult with their professional advisors in respect of their particular situation. Please note the blog post is time sensitive and subject to changes in legislation or law.

Claiming your home office on your 2020 personal tax return

In 2020, we received a crash course on working from our homes. To the surprise of many of us, we quickly adapted. We redesigned our workspaces and purchased laptops, adapters, monitors (first or second or third screens), and scanners.

As we approach the 2020 personal income tax filing season, we now turn our heads to determine which expenses we can claim on our tax returns for working from our home offices.

The CRA has also had to adapt quickly to the new normal, and it has provided a couple of different ways for employees to claim home office (HO) expenses in 2020. They are discussed in detail in this BDO tax insight. As I see no reason to repeat this excellent summary word for word, I will quickly recap it and add a couple comments that may be of interest.

To be blunt, since I am The Blunt Bean Counter, I’ll share an observation. Those of us who drove our car for work and did a fair amount of driving to clients and customers in 2019 will most likely find that the additional home office expenses we can claim in 2020 do not make up for the lower car expenses you will be able to deduct this year. As a result, you’ll likely have lower overall employment expenses to claim this year.

Below I summarize the various alternatives to claim your 2020 HO expenses.

New Temporary Flat Method

This method will allow a flat $2 per day for 200 days, so $400 in total (see the BDO piece for the criteria). The best thing about this method is you do not need to track expenses or file the T2200 form, which is completed by your employer and allows you to claim expenses you incur to do your job, such as your home office, car, and telephone). Instead, you will file a Form T777S, Statement of Employment Expenses for Working at Home Due to COVID-19.

The flat method is available only for 2020, per the CRA. That said, it could conceivably extend the exception for 2021, depending on how quickly the pandemic subsides and how this impacts remote work.

This method is great for those who struggle to keep records and track their receipts, and have not incurred much in the way of deductible home office expenses in 2020. However, I would suggest that for many Canadians, filing using the flat method will leave a fair amount of expenses on the table.

Detailed Method

The detailed method will allow you as an employee to claim the actual amount of HO expenses related to your work from home in 2020. As noted in the BDO tax alert, the “usual way of claiming home office expenses requires you to determine the proportional size of your workspace compared to total finished areas within your home, and the employment use percentage of your workspace in order to calculate your workspace in home deduction. Though these calculations can be tedious, the CRA has provided examples and a new calculator to assist.”

For 2020, if you will be claiming only HO expenses and no other employment expenses on your 2020 return, and you were not eligible to claim HO expenses prior to COVID, you will need your employer to complete Form T2200S, and you will need to complete the simplified Form T777S on your tax return.

If you will be claiming other employment expenses, such as your car or phone, you will need your employer to complete the standard Form T2200, Declaration of Conditions of Employment, and complete the standard Form T777.

It should be noted that if you are claiming HO expenses (see this CRA summary), you can only claim your property taxes and insurance if you earn commissions from your employment (if you earn commission, your total employment expense deduction can’t exceed your commission income). Thus, the home office claim is often not as large as most people expect.

I am often asked how much the CRA will allow as the percentage use for your home office space. I cannot provide a standard answer. Per the CRA as mentioned in the BDO piece, you are required to undertake a detailed calculation of the actual space you use for your office as a percentage of your home’s finished square footage.

I will tell you this. Over many years of preparing tax returns, the typical HO claim assumes a percentage use of between 5% and 15%—most are 5-10%, and very few are greater than 15%. To reiterate, your claim must be based on your actual square footage use.

Business Income

If you earn business income, as opposed to employment income, everything is status quo. There are no changes to the rules or the way you claim your HO expenses. The CRA made these changes to accommodate employees who typically work out of a physical office but could not do so this year.

I would suggest that over the next few weeks you review your situation to determine which of the above methods best suits your particular circumstances. If you are using the detailed method, start accumulating the required receipts so you can ensure you maximize your HO claim.

The content on this blog has been carefully prepared, but it has been written in general terms and should be seen as broad guidance only. The blog cannot be relied upon to cover specific situations and you should not act, or refrain from acting, upon the information contained therein without obtaining specific professional advice. Please contact BDO Canada LLP to discuss these matters in the context of your particular circumstances. BDO Canada LLP, its partners, employees and agents do not accept or assume any liability or duty of care for any loss arising from any action taken or not taken by anyone in reliance on the information on this blog or for any decision based on it.

Please note the blog posts are time sensitive and subject to changes in legislation.

BDO Canada LLP, a Canadian limited liability partnership, is a member of BDO International Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, and forms part of the international BDO network of independent member firms. BDO is the brand name for the BDO network and for each of the BDO Member Firms.

2019 Year-End Financial Clean-Up

This is my last post for 2019 and I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year.

As in many prior years, my last post of the year is about undertaking a "financial clean-up" over the holiday season. I feel this clean-up is a vital component to maintain your financial health. For full transparency, much of this post is similar to last year's, except for the portfolio review section.

So, what is a financial clean-up? In the Blunt Bean Counter’s household, it entails the following in between eating and the 2020 IHF World Junior Championship.

Yearly Spending Summary

I use Quicken to reconcile my bank and track my spending during the year. If I am not too hazy on New Year’s Day, I print out a summary of my spending by category for the year. This exercise usually provides some eye opening and sometimes depressing data, and often is the catalyst for me to dip back into the spiked eggnog

But seriously, the information is invaluable. It provides the basis for yearly budgeting, income tax information (see below), and among other uses, provides a starting point for determining your cash requirements in retirement.

Portfolio Review

The holidays or early in the new year is a great time to review your investment portfolio, annual rate of return (also 3-, 5- and 10-year returns if you have the information), asset allocation, and to re-balance to your desired allocation and risk tolerance. The million-dollar question is how your portfolio or advisor/investment manager did in comparison to appropriate benchmarks such as the S&P 500, TSX Composite, an international index and a bond index. This exercise is not necessarily easy (although some advisors and almost all investment managers provide benchmarks, they measure their returns against). The Internet has many model portfolio's you can use to create your own benchmark if you are a do-it-yourself investor.

While 2019 has been a great year in the markets, I would not skip reviewing your investment portfolio because your returns were strong. I say this for the following two reasons:

1. Your returns should still be measured against the appropriate benchmark as noted above. That is how you should compare your returns on a yearly and multi-year basis. So even if your return is good, you may have still under-performed your benchmark last year or over a 3-, 5- or 10-year comparative basis.

2. We are usually concerned with ensuring our returns are not worse than a benchmark. However, what if your returns were way higher than the benchmark? This can also be a concern that your manager is over-reaching their mandate. For example, say your manager way outperformed in 2019. I would ask them why they so outperformed. Assuming their answer is not just that they are awesome and that is why you use them, dig into their reason. Make sure it is just that they were lucky or skillful in 2019 and outperformed within their mandate—and that they did not take more risk than the mandate you provided them.

For example (this is a real case, but I am changing the facts and situation a little to protect the innocent), I was in a meeting where the investment advisor way outperformed in 2019. I asked them why they so outperformed in 2019 and got a somewhat satisfactory answer. However, I also found out they had sold off over 25% of the equity position in late November as they felt they had got their returns and the market was frothy. I nearly fell out of my seat. The investment advisor undertook a massive reallocation which he did not discuss fully with the client, and his actions clearly reflected a market timing mentality that should raise significant red flags despite the great 2019 returns. So sometimes, "too good" returns should be reviewed as intently as poor returns.

Tax Items

As noted above, I use my yearly Quicken report for tax purposes. I print out the details of donations and medical receipts (acts as checklist of the receipts I should have or will receive) and summaries of expenses that may be deductible for tax purposes, such as auto expenses. If you use your home office for business or employment purposes (remember, you need a T2200 from your employer), you should print out a summary of your home-related expenses.

Where you claim auto expenses, you should get in the habit of checking your odometer reading on the first day of January each year. This allows you to quantify how many kilometres you drive in any given year, which is often helpful in determining the percentage of employment or business use of your car (since, if you are like most people, you probably do not keep the detailed daily mileage log the CRA requires). 

The CRA recently reviewed or audited multiple clients of mine on their auto expense claims, and not having logs has been problematic. Thus, I would suggest if you are not going to keep an annual log, you should at minimum keep a log for a month or two each year.

Medical/Dental Insurance Claims

As I have a health insurance plan at work, I also start to assemble the receipts for my final insurance claim for the calendar year. I find if I don’t deal with this early in the year, I tend to get busy and forget about it.

To facilitate the claim, I ask certain health providers to issue yearly payment summaries. This ensures I have not missed any receipts and assists in claiming my medical expenses on my income tax return. You can do this for among others: physiotherapists, massage therapists, chiropractors, and orthodontists—even some drug stores provide yearly prescription summaries. This also condenses a file of 50 receipts into four or five summary receipts.

Year-end financial clean-ups are not much fun and are somewhat time consuming. But they ensure you get all the money owing back to you from your insurer and ensure you pay the least amount of taxes to the CRA. In addition, a critical review of your portfolio or investment advisor could be the most important thing you do financially in 2020.

Book Giveaway

The three winners of  the Charles B. Ticker book giveaway, “Bobby Gets Bubkes: Navigating the Sibling Estate Fight” were:

Mike P.

Elaine B.

Kim H.

The winners have been notified.

The content on this blog has been carefully prepared, but it has been written in general terms and should be seen as broad guidance only. The blog cannot be relied upon to cover specific situations and you should not act, or refrain from acting, upon the information contained therein without obtaining specific professional advice. Please contact BDO Canada LLP to discuss these matters in the context of your particular circumstances. BDO Canada LLP, its partners, employees and agents do not accept or assume any liability or duty of care for any loss arising from any action taken or not taken by anyone in reliance on the information on this blog or for any decision based on it.

Please note the blog posts are time sensitive and subject to changes in legislation.

BDO Canada LLP, a Canadian limited liability partnership, is a member of BDO International Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, and forms part of the international BDO network of independent member firms. BDO is the brand name for the BDO network and for each of the BDO Member Firms.

The Best of The Blunt Bean Counter - Common Investment Errors

This summer I am posting the best of The Blunt Bean Counter blog while I work on my golf game. Today, I am re-posting an August, 2011 blog on common investment errors I have observed over the years.

I am involved in wealth advisory for some of my clients as their wealth quarterback, co-coordinating their investment managers and various professional advisors to ensure they have a comprehensive wealth plan. I sort of chuckled when I reviewed this list, as not much has changed in the last eight years.

________

Duplication of investments

Duplication or triplication of investments, which can sometimes be interpreted as diworsification, is where investors own the same or similar mutual funds, ETFs or stocks in multiple places. A simple example is Bell Canada. An investor may own Bell in their own “play portfolio,” they may also own it in a mutual fund, they may own it in a dividend fund and they may own it again indirectly in an index fund. The same will often hold true for all the major Canadian banks. Unless one is diligent, or their advisor is monitoring this duplication or triplication, the investor has actually increased their risk/return trade off by overweighting in one or several stocks.

Laddering

This is simply ensuring that fixed income investments such as GICs and bonds have different maturity dates. For example, you should consider having a bond or GIC mature in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and so on, out to a date you feel comfortable with. However, many clients have multiple bonds and GICs come due the same year or group of years. The risk of course is that interest rates will spike, creating a favourable environment for reinvesting at a high rate, and you will have no fixed income instruments coming due for reinvestment. Alternatively, rates may drop and you have all your fixed income instruments coming due for reinvestment, locking you in at a low rate of return. With the current low interest rate environment, you may wish to speak to your investment advisor about whether shortening your ladder a year or two makes investment sense for you; however, that ladder should still have maturity dates spread out evenly over the condensed ladder period.

Utilization of capital gains and capital losses

Most advisors and investors are very cognizant of ensuring they sell stocks with unrealized capital losses in years when they have substantial gains. However, many investors get busy with Christmas shopping or business and often miss tax loss selling. Even more irritating is that I still occasionally see clients paying tax on capital gains as their advisors have not reviewed the issue with them and crystallized their capital losses. Always ensure your advisor has reviewed with you your personal realized gain/loss report by early December, and the same holds true for your corporate holdings, except the gain/losses should be reviewed before your corporate year-end.

Taxable vs. non-taxable accounts

There are differing opinions on whether it is best to hold equities and income producing investments in your RRSP or regular trading account. The answer depends on an individual’s situation. The key is to review the tax impact of each account. For example, if you are earning significant interest income in your trading account and paying 53% (when I wrote this article initially, the rate was 46%, quite the jump in rates) income tax each year, should some or all of that income be earned in your RRSP?  Would holding equities in your RRSP be best, or do you have substantial capital losses you can utilize on a personal basis? There is not necessarily a one-size-fits-all answer, but this issue must be examined on a yearly basis with your investment advisor. (In 2017 I wrote a two-part blog series on considerations for tax-efficient investing, which you may wish to review. Here are the links: Part 1 and Part 2.)

Tax shelter junkies

I have written about this several times, but it bears repeating, I have observed several people who are what I consider "tax shelter junkies" and repeatedly buy flow-through shares or other tax shelters, year after year.  I have no issue with these shelters; however, you must ensure the risk allocation for these type investments fits with your asset allocation.

Beneficiary of accounts

This is not really an investment error, but is related to investment accounts. When you have a life change, you should always review who you have designated as beneficiary of your accounts and insurance policies. I have seen several cases of ex-spouses named as the beneficiary of RRSPs and insurance polices.

The content on this blog has been carefully prepared, but it has been written in general terms and should be seen as broad guidance only. The blog cannot be relied upon to cover specific situations and you should not act, or refrain from acting, upon the information contained therein without obtaining specific professional advice. Please contact BDO Canada LLP to discuss these matters in the context of your particular circumstances. BDO Canada LLP, its partners, employees and agents do not accept or assume any liability or duty of care for any loss arising from any action taken or not taken by anyone in reliance on the information on this blog or for any decision based on it.

Please note the blog posts are time sensitive and subject to changes in legislation.

BDO Canada LLP, a Canadian limited liability partnership, is a member of BDO International Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, and forms part of the international BDO network of independent member firms. BDO is the brand name for the BDO network and for each of the BDO Member Firms.

Year-End Financial Clean-up

This is my last post for 2018 and I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year.

In prior years, my last post of the year would often be on undertaking a "financial clean-up" over the holiday season. I thought I would revisit this topic again this year, with some comparative assistance to review your portfolio's 2018 performance.

So, what is a financial cleanup? In the Blunt Bean Counter’s household, it entails the following in between eating and the 2019 IHF World Junior Championship.

Yearly Spending Summary

I use Quicken to reconcile my bank and track my spending during the year. If I am not too hazy on New Year’s Day, I print out a summary of my spending by category for the year. This exercise usually provides some eye opening and sometimes depressing data, and often is the catalyst for me to dip back into the spiked eggnog :)

But seriously, the information is invaluable. It provides the basis for yearly budgeting, income tax information (see below), and amongst other uses, provides a starting point for determining your cash requirements in retirement.

Portfolio Review

The holidays or early in the New Year is a great time to review your investment portfolio, annual rates of return (also 3,5 and 10 year returns if you have the information) asset allocation, and to re-balance to your desired allocation and risk tolerance. The $64,000 question is how your portfolio or advisor/investment manager did in comparison to appropriate benchmarks such as the S&P 500, TSX Composite, an International index and a Bond Index. This exercise is not necessarily easy (although some advisors and most investment managers provide benchmarks, they measure their returns against). I hope to write something in more detail on this topic next year.

PWL Capital on their resource page has market statistics and model portfolio's that you can use as guidelines or to create your own benchmarks which I find useful.

Rob Carrick of The Globe and Mail in an article (it is behind a firewall) last year, pointed me to this Suggestus site which offers a no cost comparison against thousands of portfolios'. This is a good test check, but since no two portfolios are exactly alike, you need to understand the limitations of this site as an exact bench-marker.

Tax Items

As noted above, I use my yearly Quicken report for tax purposes. I print out the details of donations and medical receipts (acts as checklist of the receipts I should have or will receive) and summaries of expenses that may be deductible for tax purposes such as auto expenses. If you use your home office for business or employment purposes (remember you need a T2200 from your employer), you should print out a summary of your home related expenses.

Where you claim auto expenses, you should get in the habit of checking your odometer reading on the first day of January each year. This allows you to quantify how many kilometres you drive in any given year, which is often helpful in determining the percentage of employment or business use of your car (since, if you are like most people, you probably do not keep the detailed daily mileage log the CRA requires).

Medical/Dental Insurance Claims

As I have a health insurance plan at work, I also start to assemble the receipts for my final insurance claim for the calendar year. I find if I don’t deal with this early in the year, I tend to get busy and forget about it.

To facilitate the claim, I ask certain health providers to issue yearly payment summaries. This ensures I have not missed any receipts and assists in claiming my medical expenses on my income tax return. You can do this for physiotherapy, massage, chiropractors, orthodontists, and even some drug stores provide yearly prescription summaries.

Year-end financial clean-ups are not much fun and somewhat time consuming. But they ensure you get all the money owing back to you from your insurer and ensure you pay the least amount of taxes to the CRA. In addition, a critical review of your portfolio and/or investment advisor could be the most important thing you do financially in 2019.

This site provides general information on various tax issues and other matters. The information is not intended to constitute professional advice and may not be appropriate for a specific individual or fact situation. It is written by the author solely in their personal capacity and cannot be attributed to the accounting firm with which they are affiliated. It is not intended to constitute professional advice, and neither the author nor the firm with which the author is associated shall accept any liability in respect of any reliance on the information contained herein. Readers should always consult with their professional advisors in respect of their particular situation. Please note the blog post is time sensitive and subject to changes in legislation or law.

Should You Simplify Your Investment Holdings for Estate Purposes as You Age?

Clients often ask me if they should sell stocks, real estate etc. for tax purposes. I typically answer back, “your decision should be an investment decision, do not let the tax tail wag the dog". However, where the question is framed as “Mark, I am starting to get my estate in order and I think it is too complex, should I sell certain assets to reduce the complexity?", my answer is often couched with “it depends”.

Before I delve into this issue, let us first take a step back. This question/issue arises in two ways:

1. The client consciously decides they need to make their estate more manageable for their spouse and/or children. The reasoning behind this decision is often they had to deal with a messy estate left by their parents, sibling or friend. In other cases, they just know their family is not as sophisticated as they are, and they want simplicity.

2. During an estate or financial planning discussion I ask my client if they were hit by a car leaving the meeting (I am very popular among my clients for this line of questioning 😊) would their family know what assets they own and where there are? Or, I just point out a complexity that makes the client step-back and consider whether they need to simplify things for their estate.

Whether it is the client or a question I asked that brings forth this issue is irrelevant. The key take-away is that when you are undertaking estate planning, simplification of your estate should be considered when practical.

Simplification of an estate at its finest is when you clean up complexity with no foregone investment opportunity cost or tax cost. Unfortunately, simplification for many people often comes with at least some investment and/or tax cost and thus, may not be practical where the tax and/or investment cost is higher than the person is willing to absorb.

No Cost Simplification

The following are examples where you can simplify your estate for your family at no cost:

1. You have four investment brokers handling your affairs. To simplify your estate, you consolidate to one or two.

2. If you have multiple corporations, you may be able to amalgamate, dissolve or consolidate without any tax consequences.

3. You open a joint account with a child (your trust implicitly) with enough money to cover a few months expenses and your funeral expenses if you died.

Simplification With an Investment or Tax Cost

In contrast to the above, there are many examples of where a decision to simply will result in a tax cost or possibly foregoing an excellent investment opportunity. For example:

1. Let’s say you were born in a foreign country and have kept investments or business structures in place back home. However, your children do not speak your mother tongue or understand the business culture and customs of that country. I have seen clients liquidate those investments to simplify their estate for their spouses/children’s benefits and bring the money back to Canada.

2. Some people have shareholdings, partnerships or joint ventures with friends or business associates. In the case of say a partnership, both parties often have no desire to keep the partnership going if one partner were to die and the other’s children step in. Thus, as they age they either sell the business or real estate earlier than they envisioned, or when a property is sold, instead of re-investing together, they go their separate ways.

3. I have also seen situations where a parent has a holding company and to avoid the estate complications of the deemed disposition of that property and the other post-mortem tax issues, they distribute the cash or assets as a taxable dividend to themselves, such that the corporation has no assets left. The parent has thus pre-paid tax, possibly years earlier than required (the tax would typically not be due until the latest death of the deceased or their spouse, if they left the holding company shares to their spouse).

Having it Both Ways

Some clients try and kill two birds with one stone. They keep their structures in place, but purchase insurance to cover any estate liability so that the family is not scrambling to sell assets to satisfy the CRA and the family keeps the more complex structure. The only real advantage here is that the simplification of the estate becomes less time sensitive, but the complexity remains.

Simplification is Not Required

In some families, the spouse and/or children are sophisticated business people and can seamlessly step into the parent’s shoes. This allows the parent to keep a complex structure in place but does not guarantee the estate will not initially be messy for estate and/or tax purposes.

Others have teams of advisors whom they expect to step in and guide the surviving spouse and/or children, so the estate complications are greatly reduced.

It Depends

So, I come full circle back to my answer in the first paragraph. Does simplification of an estate make sense? My answer is still “it depends”. Where there is no cost to simplifying, there is no question simplification should be undertaken. Where there is a tax cost or estate complexity cost, it depends on various factors; from the complexity of your estate, to the potential returns that would be forgone by simplifying, to the tax liability that will be incurred, to the sophistication of your spouse and/or children.

The only definitive advice I can provide is: always consider how complex your estate is, and consider whether you can simplify it for your family.

This site provides general information on various tax issues and other matters. The information is not intended to constitute professional advice and may not be appropriate for a specific individual or fact situation. It is written by the author solely in their personal capacity and cannot be attributed to the accounting firm with which they are affiliated. It is not intended to constitute professional advice, and neither the author nor the firm with which the author is associated shall accept any liability in respect of any reliance on the information contained herein. Readers should always consult with their professional advisors in respect of their particular situation. Please note the blog post is time sensitive and subject to changes in legislation or law.

The Best of The Blunt Bean Counter - Transferring the Family Cottage - Part 3

In the final post of my three-part blog series on transferring the family cottage, I discuss some of the alternative strategies available to mitigate or defer income taxes that may arise upon the transfer of the cottage to your children. Unfortunately, none provide a tax "magic bullet".

Part 3 – Ways to Reduce the Tax Hit

The following alternatives may be available to mitigate and defer the income taxes that may arise on the transfer of a family cottage.

Life Insurance

Life insurance may prevent a forced sale of a family cottage where there is a large income tax liability upon the death of a parent, and the estate does not have sufficient liquid assets to cover the income tax liability. The downside to insurance is the cost over the years, which can be substantial. In addition, since the value of the cottage may rise over the years, it may be problematic to have the proper amount of life insurance in place (although you can over-insure initially or if your health permits, increase the insurance at a later date). I would suggest very few people imagined the quantum of the capital gains they would have on their cottages when they initially purchased them, so guessing at the adequate amount of life insurance required is difficult at best.

Gift or Sale to Your Children

As discussed in Part 2, this option is challenging as it will create a deemed capital gain, and will result in an immediate income tax liability in the year of transfer if there is an inherent capital gain on the cottage. The upside to this strategy is that if the gift or sale is undertaken at a time when there is only a small unrealized capital gain and the cottage increases in value after the transfer, most of the income tax liability is passed on to the second generation. This strategy does not eliminate the income tax issue; rather it defers it, which in turn can create even a larger income tax liability for the next generation. Since many cottages have already increased substantially in value, a current sale or transfer to your children will create significant deemed capital gains, making this strategy problematic in many cases.

If you decide to sell the cottage to your children, the Income Tax Act provides for a five-year capital gains reserve, and thus consideration should be given to having the terms of repayment spread out over at least five years.

Transfer to a Trust

A transfer of a cottage to a trust generally results in a deemed capital gain at the time of transfer. An insidious feature of a family trust is that while the trust may be able to claim the Principal Residence Exemption ("PRE"), in doing so, it can effectively preclude the beneficiaries (typically the children) of the trust from claiming the PRE on their own city homes for the period the trust designates the cottage as a principal residence.

This paragraph is an update to the original 2011 post. A reader of the blog recently asked a question on life and remainder interests in a cottage. When gifting or using a trust, you can transfer ownership of your cottage to your children, while still keeping a "life interest" in the cottage, which allows you continued use of the cottage and the income from the property (if any) for the rest of your life. However, the transfer/gift to the trust still triggers a capital gain for tax purposes. You are essentially just ensuring you have access and use of your cottage and the future increase in the cottage value accrues to your children from the date of the transfer. This is a complicated topic and beyond my area of expertise. You should consult your lawyer in tandem with your accountant to ensure you understand the issues in your specific situation in using a life transfer and remainder interest.

If a parent is 65 years old or older, transferring the cottage to an Alter Ego Trust or a Joint Partner Trust is another alternative. These trusts are more effective than a standard trust, since there is no deemed disposition and no capital gain is created on the transfer. The downside is that upon the death of the parent, the cottage is deemed to be sold and any capital gain is taxed at the highest personal income tax rate, which could result in even more income tax owing.

The use of a trust can be an effective means of sheltering the cottage from probate taxes. Caution is advised if you are considering a non-Alter Ego or Joint Partner Trust, as on the 21-year anniversary date of the creation of the trust, the cottage must either be transferred to a beneficiary (should be tax-free), or the trust must pay income taxes on the property’s accrued gain.

Transfer to a Corporation

A cottage can be transferred to a corporation on a tax-free basis using the rollover provisions of the Income Tax Act. This would avoid the deemed capital gain issue upon transfer. However, subsequent to the transfer the parents would own shares in the corporation that would result in a deemed disposition (and most likely a capital gain) upon the death of the last surviving parent. An “estate freeze” can be undertaken concurrently, which would fix the parent’s income tax liability at death and allow future growth to accrue to the children; however, that is a topic for another time.

In addition, holding a cottage in a corporation will result in a taxable benefit for personal use and will eliminate any chance of claiming the PRE on the cottage for the parent and children in the future so this alternative is rarely used.

In summary, where there is a large unrealized capital gain on a family cottage, there will be no income tax panacea. However, one of the alternatives noted above may assist in mitigating the income tax issue and allow for the orderly transfer of the property.

I strongly encourage you to seek professional advice when dealing with this issue. There are numerous pitfalls and issues as noted above, and the advice above is general in nature and should not be relied upon for specific circumstances.

This site provides general information on various tax issues and other matters. The information is not intended to constitute professional advice and may not be appropriate for a specific individual or fact situation. It is written by the author solely in their personal capacity and cannot be attributed to the accounting firm with which they are affiliated. It is not intended to constitute professional advice, and neither the author nor the firm with which the author is associated shall accept any liability in respect of any reliance on the information contained herein. Readers should always consult with their professional advisors in respect of their particular situation. Please note the blog post is time sensitive and subject to changes in legislation or law.

The Best of The Blunt Bean Counter - Tranferring the Family Cottage - Part 2

In the second installment of my April, 2011 three-part series on transferring the family cottage, I discuss the income tax implications of transferring or gifting a cottage to your children. Many people are unaware these gifts or sales, often create an immediate income tax liability.  

Part 2 – Tax Issues

As discussed in Part 1 of this series, you can only designate one property as a principal residence per family after 1981. In order to explore the income tax implications associated with transferring ownership of a cottage, I will assume both a city residence and a cottage have been purchased subsequent to 1981, and I will assume that the PRE has been fully allocated to your city home and the cottage will be the taxable property.

Many parents want to transfer their cottage to their children while they are alive, however any gift or sale to their children will result in a deemed capital gain under the Income Tax Act equal to the fair market value (“FMV”) of the cottage, less the original cost of the cottage, plus any renovations to the cottage. Consequently, a transfer while the owner-parent(s) is/are alive will create an income tax liability where there is an unrealized capital gain (i.e. Your cottage is worth $500,000 and the cost is $200,000, you will have a $300,000 capital gain even though you did not actually sell the cottage).

Alternatively, where a cottage is not transferred during one parent’s lifetime and the cottage is left to the surviving spouse or common-law partner, there are no income tax issues until the death of the surviving spouse/partner. However, upon the death of the surviving spouse/partner, there will be a deemed capital gain, calculated exactly as noted above. This deemed capital gain must be reported on the terminal (final) tax return of the deceased spouse/partner.

Whether a gift or transfer of the cottage is made during your lifetime, or the property transfers to your children through your will, you will have the same income tax issue: a deemed disposition with a capital gain equal to the FMV of the cottage, less its cost.

It is my understanding that all provinces (with the exception of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and parts of rural Nova Scotia) have land transfer taxes that would be applicable on any type of cottage transfer. You should confirm whether land transfer tax is applicable in your province with your real estate lawyer.

So, are there any strategies to mitigate or alleviate the income tax issue noted above? In my opinion, other than buying life insurance to cover the income tax liability, most strategies are essentially ineffective tax-wise as they only defer or partially mitigate the income tax issue. In Part 3 of this series I will summarize the income tax planning options available to transfer the family cottage.

This site provides general information on various tax issues and other matters. The information is not intended to constitute professional advice and may not be appropriate for a specific individual or fact situation. It is written by the author solely in their personal capacity and cannot be attributed to the accounting firm with which they are affiliated. It is not intended to constitute professional advice, and neither the author nor the firm with which the author is associated shall accept any liability in respect of any reliance on the information contained herein. Readers should always consult with their professional advisors in respect of their particular situation. Please note the blog post is time sensitive and subject to changes in legislation or law.

The Best of The Blunt Bean Counter - Transferring the Family Cottage - Part 1

In April 2011, I wrote a  three-part series on transferring the family cottage for the Canadian Capitalist blog. Since many Canadian's are at their cottage and the topic is apropos, I will re-post the blogs over the next three weeks,

Part 1 deals with the historical nature of the income tax rules, while Part 2 will deal with the income tax implications of transferring or gifting a cottage, and finally in the third post, I discuss alternative income tax planning opportunities that may mitigate or defer income tax upon the transfer of a family cottage.

Part 1 – There Is No Panacea

Canadians love their cottages. They are willing to put up with three-hour drives, traffic jams, never-ending repairs and maintenance, and constant hosting duties for their piece of tranquility by the lake. However, I would suggest the family cottage is one of the most problematic assets for income tax planning purposes, let alone the inherent family politics that are sure to arise.

For purposes of this discussion, I will just assume away the family politics issue. I will assume the children will each grab a beer, sit down at a table, and work out a cottage-sharing schedule to everyone’s satisfaction; and while they are at it, agree on how they will share the future ownership of the cottage when their parents transfer the cottage or pass away. I would say this is a very realistic situation in Canada, not!!!

Let’s also dismiss any illusions some may harbour that they can plan around the taxation issues related to cottages (or even avoid them entirely). I can tell you outright that there is no magical solution to solving the income tax issues in regard to a family cottage, just ways to mitigate or defer the issues. Many cottages were purchased years ago and have large unrealized capital gains.

So let’s start by taking a step back in time. Up until 1981, each spouse could designate their own principal residence (“PR”) which, in most cases, made the income tax implications of disposing or gifting a family cottage a null and void issue. The “principal residence exemption” (“PRE”) in the Income Tax Act essentially eliminated any capital gain realized when a personal use property was sold or transferred. Families that had a home in the city and a cottage in the country typically did not have to pay tax on any capital gains realized on either property when sold or gifted.

However, for any year after 1981, a family unit (generally considered to be the taxpayer, his or her spouse or common-law partner, and unmarried minor children) can only designate one property between them for purposes of the PRE. Although the designation of a property as a PR is a yearly designation, it is only made when there is an actual disposition of a home (New rules have been put in place in respect to selling your PR, see this blog I wrote on the topic in Oct, 2017).

For example, if you owned and lived in both a cottage and a house between 2001 and 2011 and sold them both in 2011, you could choose to designate your cottage as your PR for 2001 to 2003 and your house from 2004 to 2011, or any other permutation plus one year (the Canada Revenue Agency [“CRA”] provides a bonus year because they are just a giving agency).

In order to decide which property to designate for each year after 1981, it is always necessary to determine whether there is a larger gain per year on your cottage or your home in the city. Once that determination is made, in most cases it makes sense to designate the property with the larger gain per year as your personal residence for purposes of the PRE. 

This site provides general information on various tax issues and other matters. The information is not intended to constitute professional advice and may not be appropriate for a specific individual or fact situation. It is written by the author solely in their personal capacity and cannot be attributed to the accounting firm with which they are affiliated. It is not intended to constitute professional advice, and neither the author nor the firm with which the author is associated shall accept any liability in respect of any reliance on the information contained herein. Readers should always consult with their professional advisors in respect of their particular situation. Please note the blog post is time sensitive and subject to changes in legislation or law.

The T1135 Form – Yet Again! & Hiring The Blunt Bean Counter

This will be the fifth time I am writing about the T1135 Foreign Income Verification Statement since September, 2013. Today I am discussing the implementation of the April, 2015 Federal budget proposal in which the Conservatives promised to simplify the reporting requirements where your cost of foreign property is less than $250,000.

This proposal has now been implemented and a new T1135 has been released. Here is a link to the new form.

Qualifying for the Simplified Method

The basic requirement to file a T1135 form is still in place. That being, if you own specified foreign property with a cost of more than $100,000 at any time in the year, you must file the form. However, now where you own specified foreign property with an adjusted cost base of more than $100,000 and less than $250,000 throughout the year, you can file using the simplified method (or you can still use the detailed reporting method if you wish, but why you would is beyond me). Note, if your cost exceeds $250k at any time during the year, you cannot use the simplified method.

The simplified method is reported on Part A of the form. While this method is less onerous than the detailed reporting requirement, you will now be required to report the top three countries based on cost during the year under the simplified method. This determination will require some work if your broker does not provide such, or you are a do-it-yourself investor. 

Filing Online and Reassessments

It should be noted you can now file the T1135 online for 2014 and subsequent years. The CRA has also re-iterated that the period for reassessing your return is extended by three years if you have failed to report income from a specified foreign property on your return and Form T1135 was not filed, was not filed on time, or was filed inaccurately.

While the simplified reporting method is better than nothing, I would suggest that most accountants and taxpayers still don’t understand why the T1135 form is required at all, where all you are only reporting is foreign holdings held with your Canadian institution(s).

Hiring The Blunt Bean Counter

I am often asked by readers if they can engage me for various income tax, accounting and wealth management services. Although I rarely if ever, self-promote on the blog, today, I am going to make an exception. Below I’ve listed the various services my national accounting firm and I can provide to you.

Corporate Income Tax Planning

To help you minimize your corporate income taxes, we provide tax planning services including but not limited to: corporate reorganizations, estate freezes, purifications for the capital gains exemption, assistance with indirect taxes such as HST, in-bound and out-bound foreign tax planning, R&D claims, transfer pricing and valuations.

Corporate Financial Statements

To ensure all your corporate compliance needs are met, we typically provide the following services to owner-managed businesses: financial statement preparation, corporate tax return preparation, corporate and personal income tax and estate planning and personal tax return preparation for the business owner.

Estate Planning and T3 Estate Tax Returns

Many people are concerned about ensuring they minimize their taxes upon death and/or leave a legacy to their family. To assist you, we provide estate planning, which typically involves determining your estate tax liability and then trying to minimize and/or manage this liability through tax planning and will planning (with your lawyer). In addition, where you have had a family member pass away or are named executor to an estate, we can assist you in filing the required estate tax filings (which are often very complicated in the year of death, especially if the assets do not pass to a surviving spouse, due to the deemed disposition rules).

Wealth Management and Financial Planning

Most people are concerned with ensuring they have enough money for retirement. I am involved with quarterbacking my client’s wealth and retirement planning, typically starting with a financial check-up and financial plan. As financial quarterback, I try to ensure your investment advisor, lawyer, insurance agent, banker, business consultant integrate their advice into one efficient, optimum, coordinated plan, taking into account your investment, retirement, income tax and successions needs.
 
If you do not have an investment advisor or are looking for a new advisor, we recommend you meet several to find a fit from both an investment perspective and also from a personal relationship perspective.

Accountants cannot provide investment advice. We do however; work closely with several highly respected investment advisors whom we can introduce you to. The advisors typically require a minimum of $1,000,000 of investable assets (yes, I am aware, this is a large issue for people who are looking for a good investment advisor, but do not meet the minimum asset requirements). 

Personal Tax Planning

To help you reduce or minimize your personal taxes, my firm has several excellent tax people who can assist you with personal tax planning and tax return preparation. Unfortunately, because income tax season has essentially become condensed into one month (since the T3, T5013 slips do not arrive until early April at best) I now only prepare personal tax returns for my corporate or wealth clients.

If you would like to engage me or my firm for any of the above noted services, or want to discuss your specific situation and obtain a quote for services, feel free to email me at bluntbeancounter@gmail.com or click the hire The Blunt Bean Counter at the top right of the page.

This site provides general information on various tax issues and other matters. The information is not intended to constitute professional advice and may not be appropriate for a specific individual or fact situation. It is written by the author solely in their personal capacity and cannot be attributed to the accounting firm with which they are affiliated. It is not intended to constitute professional advice, and neither the author nor the firm with which the author is associated shall accept any liability in respect of any reliance on the information contained herein. Readers should always consult with their professional advisors in respect of their particular situation.

Year-End Financial Clean-up - 2015 Version

In 2016, would you like to improve your money management, minimize taxes and ensure your loved ones have a financial road map?

Then this holiday season, in between your family gatherings and trying to watch 2016 IIHF World Junior Championship games from Finland, consider undertaking a financial cleanup.

So what is a financial cleanup? In the Blunt Bean Counter’s household it entails the following (Note: For full disclosure, this post is just an update of my 2015 year-end Financial Clean-up).

Yearly Spending Summary

I use Quicken to reconcile my bank and track my spending during the year. If I am not too hazy on New Year’s Day, I print out a summary of my spending by category for the year. This exercise usually provides some eye opening and sometimes depressing data, and often is the catalyst for me to dip back into the spiked eggnog!

But seriously, the information is invaluable. It provides the basis for yearly budgeting, income tax information (see below), and amongst other uses provides a starting point for determining your cash requirements in retirement.

Portfolio Review

The holidays or early in the New Year is a great time to review your investment portfolio and annual rates of return; although this year, this may be a very gloomy exercise, especially if your portfolio is Canadian based. I like to compare my returns to some large standard indexes and to the yearly returns on the Canadian Couch Potato’s low cost ETF model portfolios. The Couch Potato typically provides the data for the prior year’s returns on his model portfolio’s in the first week or two of January. I also have the advantage of reviewing my returns to those of the various investment managers my clients engage.

January is also a great time to review your asset allocation, and to re-balance to your desired allocation and risk tolerance.

Tax Items

As noted above, I use my yearly Quicken report for tax purposes. I print out the details of donations and medical receipts (acts as checklist of the receipts I should have or will receive) and summaries of expenses that may be deductible for tax purposes such as auto expenses. If you use your home office for business or employment purposes (remember you need a T2200 from your employer), you should print out a summary of your home related expenses.

Where you claim auto expenses, you should get in the habit of checking your odometer reading on the first day of January each year. This allows you to quantify how many kilometres you drive in any given year, which is often helpful in determining the percentage of employment or business use of your car (since, if you are like most people, you probably do not keep a detailed log as the CRA requires).

Medical/Dental Insurance Claims

As I have a health insurance plan at work, I also start to assemble the receipts for my final insurance claim for the calendar year. I find if I don’t deal with this early in the year, I tend to get busy and forget about it.

To facilitate the claim, I ask certain health providers to issue yearly payment summaries. This ensures I have not missed any receipts and also assists in claiming my medical expenses on my income tax return. You can do this for physiotherapy, massage, chiropractors, orthodontists, and even some drug stores provide yearly prescription summaries.

Stress-Test Checklist

If you are a regular reader, you know I have seemingly written a hundred times about stress-testing your finances and writing your financial story (in case you pass away). The holidays or early January is a great time to update your financial story or checklist for any changes that occurred in the prior year. Such things as new brokerage accounts, online passwords, changes in insurance, etc. need to be updated. If you have not yet got around to stress-testing your finances and writing your financial story, there is no better time to start than early in the year.

Speaking of the year-end, this is my last post for 2015 and I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year. See you in January.

This site provides general information on various tax issues and other matters. The information is not intended to constitute professional advice and may not be appropriate for a specific individual or fact situation. It is written by the author solely in their personal capacity and cannot be attributed to the accounting firm with which they are affiliated. It is not intended to constitute professional advice, and neither the author nor the firm with which the author is associated shall accept any liability in respect of any reliance on the information contained herein. Readers should always consult with their professional advisors in respect of their particular situation.

Should You Claim Capital Cost Allowance on Your Rental Property?

It has been my experience that minimizing income taxes is typically the number one objective for many of my clients. Yet, some clients instruct me to not claim depreciation (the technically correct term for income tax purposes is capital cost allowance or “CCA”) on their rental property(ies), which results in a higher income tax liability.

I am further confounded when clients who have claimed CCA in prior years will not sell their rental property because they will owe income tax on both their capital gain and recaptured CCA (see detailed discussion below). Today I try and breakdown the reasoning for these counter-intuitive income tax positions.

A discussion as to whether or not one should claim CCA can become extremely complex when you consider inflation, purchasing power, discount values and present values. In an effort to not over complicate the issue, I will essentially ignore most of these factors; however, one must always be cognizant of them. For the purposes of today’s blog post, I will work under the assumption that you hold your rental property for 20 or so years and a dollar today is worth a heck of a lot more than a dollar 20 years from now.

When someone purchases a residential rental property, they can claim CCA at the rate of 4% on the building portion of the property (non-residential property may be entitled to a 6% claim). The land portion cannot be depreciated. In the year of purchase, only 50% of the CCA may be claimed.

For example: if you purchase a residential building for $800,000 in 2015 and you determine that 75% of the property related to the building and 25% related to the land, you will start claiming CCA on $600,000 ($800,000 purchase price x .75%). The allocation may be determined through negotiation with the seller and is reflected in the purchase and sale agreement, by appraisal or based on an insurance policy or other relevant information.

In the first year you can claim CCA to a maximum of $ 12,000 ($600,000 x .04% CCA rate x 50% rate allowed the first year).

In year two you can claim CCA of $23,520 ($600,000 -$12,000 CCA previously claimed x 4%). In all future years, the CCA claim is equal to the original cost of $600,000 less CCA claimed in all previous years x 4%. Technically, the remaining amount to be depreciated is called Undepreciated Capital Cost or “UCC”.

It should be noted that in general you are not allowed to create a loss for tax purposes with CCA. So continuing with the above example, if in year two you had net rental income of $15,000 before CCA, you cannot claim the $23,520 of CCA and create a loss of $8,520. You may only claim $15,000 of the CCA to bring your rental income down to nil. If you have more than one rental property, you can claim the maximum CCA even if it creates a loss on one property, if the net income of all rental properties does not become negative. For example, if in addition to the rental property above, you had a second property with net income of $9,000 after CCA on that property, you could claim the full $23,520 to create a loss of $8,520 on that property and net income of only $480 on both properties ($9,000-$8,520).

Thus, to the extent you can claim CCA; you have absolute income tax savings or a tax shield equal to the CCA you claim times your marginal income tax rate. Consequently, one wonders why anyone would not claim CCA if their marginal income tax rate was say at least 35% and they plan to hold the property long-term.

The reason some people do not claim CCA is a concept known as recapture. When you sell a building or rental property for proceeds equal to or greater than the original cost of the building, any CCA claimed since day one is “recaptured” and taxed as regular income. Thus, say you purchased the $800,000 building in the example 25 years ago and over those 25 years you claimed $350,000 in CCA. If you sell the land and building for $1,000,000, which is more than the original purchase price of $800,000, you would have to add $350,000 in recapture to your income and report a capital gain of $200,000 ($1,000,000-800,000).

At this point I could get into a technical discussion of the present value of the CCA tax savings over multiple years versus paying recapture 25 years later, however (1) I think it causes unnecessary confusion for purposes of this discussion and I don’t think most people even take this into account and (2) even though I am an accountant, I hated doing PV calculations in school, so if I tried to do them, I would probably get them wrong. But seriously, I have never had a client ask about the present value of their deprecation tax savings; they know intuitively a dollar saved today is typically worth far more than a dollar in tax paid in the future.

We can now discuss the second issue that confounds me in regard to CCA, that being some people are not willing to sell for the $1,000,000 we use in the example above because of the recapture they will owe.

Say Judy Smith purchased the property initially for $800,000 and she is in the 35% marginal tax bracket. If Judy sells the property, she will have to pay income tax on $350,000 of recapture and a $200,000 capital gain. The additional income tax that results from the sale for Judy will be approximately $220,000 (because she moved into the higher marginal rates).

Judy will thus net $780,000 ($1,000,000 proceeds less $220,000 tax), $20,000 less than her original cost. If Judy is like some people, she may not want to sell the property because she does not feel she made any money on the property. I have trouble understanding this position, since she would have benefited from the tax shield on $350,000 of CCA, which at a tax rate of 35% was worth approximately $125,000 and would have grown to between $200,000 (using a 4% return on the after-tax savings) and $260,000 (using a 6% return on the after-tax savings) and still broke even on her investment. If Judy did not want to sell because she feels the property still has large upside, or her tax rate would be lower in a future year and/or she cannot find another investment that can provide the same returns, that is another issue.

If Judy had purchased the property in 1990, she would need approximately $1,280,000 to purchase the property today (See bank of Canada inflation calculator).

In summary, I will typically recommend that a client claim CCA on their rental property. I also generaly tell them to not let the income tax due on recapture cloud a potential sale decision. In the end analysis, tax savings today are almost always worth more than taxes paid in the future, unless the purchase to sale period is very short.

This site provides general information on various tax issues and other matters. The information is not intended to constitute professional advice and may not be appropriate for a specific individual or fact situation. It is written by the author solely in their personal capacity and cannot be attributed to the accounting firm with which they are affiliated. It is not intended to constitute professional advice, and neither the author nor the firm with which the author is associated shall accept any liability in respect of any reliance on the information contained herein. Readers should always consult with their professional advisors in respect of their particular situation. Please note the blog post is time sensitive and subject to changes in legislation or law.

Year-end Financial Cleanup

In 2015, would you like to improve your money management, minimize taxes and ensure your loved ones have a financial road map?

Then this holiday season, in between your family gatherings and watching the 2015 IIHF World Junior Championships consider undertaking a financial cleanup.

So what is a financial cleanup? In the Blunt Bean Counter’s household it entails the following:

Yearly Spending Summary

I use Quicken to reconcile my bank and track my spending during the year. If I am not too hazy on New Year’s Day, I print out my spending by category for the year. This exercise usually provides some eye opening and sometimes depressing data, and often is the catalyst for me to dip back into the spiked eggnog!

But seriously, the information is invaluable. It provides the basis for yearly budgeting, income tax information (see below), and amongst other uses provides a starting point for determining your cash requirements in retirement.

Portfolio Review

The holidays or early in the New Year is a great time to review your investment portfolio and annual rates of return. I like to compare my returns to standard indexes and to the yearly returns on the Canadian Couch Potato’s low cost ETF model portfolios. The Couch Potato typically provides the data for the prior year’s returns on his model portfolio’s in the first week or two of January. I also have the advantage of reviewing my returns to those of the various investment managers my clients engage.

January is also a great time to review your asset allocation, and to re-balance to your desired allocation and risk tolerance.

Tax Items

As noted above, I use my yearly Quicken report for tax purposes. I print out the details of donations and medical receipts (acts as checklist of the receipts I should have or will receive) and summaries of expenses that may be deductible for tax purposes such as auto expenses. If you use your home office for business or employment purposes (remember you need a T2200 from your employer), you should print out a summary of your home related expenses.

Where you claim auto expenses, you should get in the habit of checking your odometer reading on the first day of January each year. This allows you to quantify how many kilometres you drive in any given year, which is often helpful in determining the percentage of employment or business use of your car (since, if you are like most people, you probably do not keep a detailed log as the CRA would prefer).

Medical/Dental Insurance Claims

As I have a health insurance plan at work, I also start to assemble the receipts for my final insurance claim for the calendar year. I find if I don’t deal with this early in the year, I tend to get busy and forget about it.

To facilitate the claim, I ask certain health providers to issue yearly payment summaries. This ensures I have not missed any receipts and also assists in claiming my medical expenses on my income tax return. You can do this for physiotherapy, massage, chiropractors, orthodontists, and even some drug stores provide yearly prescription summaries.

Stress-Test Checklist

If you are a regular reader, you know I have written numerous times about stress-testing your finances and writing your financial story ( in case you pass away). The holidays or early January is a great time to update your financial story or checklist for any changes that occurred in the prior year. Such things as new brokerage accounts, online passwords, changes in insurance, etc. need to be updated. If you have not yet got around to stress-testing your finances and writing your financial story, there is no better time to start than early in the year.

Speaking of the year-end, this is my last post for 2014 and I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year. See you in January.

The blogs posted on The Blunt Bean Counter provide information of a general nature. These posts should not be considered specific advice; as each reader's personal financial situation is unique and fact specific. Please contact a professional advisor prior to implementing or acting upon any of the information contained in one of the blogs.