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Log your Business Driven KM Please

When you own your own limited company, and the company does not own your vehicle, you are able to charge back to your company a travel expense based on your business travels.  You must maintain a  log book of the information that details the date and particulars as to the purpose of the trip to support the claim.

The expense, when reimbursed, is not be be added to your income, because it is a reimbursement of your expenses.  The amount must not exceed that as allowed by CRA, otherwise, a taxable benefit would be applied.

In order for you to track your business trips, and personal trips, and providing you are using a cell phone, which doubles up as a GPS device, our suggestion is for you to use a tracking app, like MileIQ, which can provide to you the reporting necessary to support the claim.

MileIQ provides to accountants, a promotion code which reduces the annual cost of this service by 20%, resulting in about $50 annual cost for using the app, more than 40 times per month.  Most of the business people I know, drive more than 40 times on business each month, but it doesn’t hurt for you to try before you buy, and get a feeling for the benefit.

The MileIQ app runs in the background on your iOS or Android phone and logs every drive automatically. You swipe each drive to classify it as business or personal, and MileIQ calculates the value of your deductible mileage. You can add details like parking, tolls, purpose and vehicle and have a complete, accurate mileage log practically effortlessly! Your log gets synced to the cloud, so you can get to it any time, even years down the road. You’ll be able to claim the full value of your mileage deduction with total peace of mind.

This year, MileIQ is offering my clients a 20% discount on annual unlimited-drive plans. Subscriptions are regularly priced at $5.99/mo. or $59.99/yr. (Here’s how to redeem promo codes.)

You can try MileIQ by downloading the free app for iOS or Android. To get an annual unlimited-drive plan at a 20% discount, sign in to your MileIQ web dashboard, click “Get Unlimited Drives” and use promo code JHOL701A at checkout. (Note that the discount is not valid for in-app upgrades or monthly plans.)

Want more information? Take a look at this flyer.

I hope you’ll give MileIQ a try and let me know what you think. (And remember, the subscription is usually deductible too — at 54.5 cents for every business mile in 2018, it’ll pay for itself in just a few drives!)

 

This is their website: MileIQ

 

Have a nice day..

Jack

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Dissolution of a Company

Sometimes things just don’t work out as planned, and sometimes, a company lives a natural life, and requires a hand in having it taken off the records.

This process is called Dissolving a Company and there is a process to do that, otherwise you will constantly be informed to file one thing or another with the government.

The articles of dissolution can be obtained on the internet with the following link:

Articles of Dissolution

 

You might want to read a little about it here:

Ontario Dissolution of a Company

Once the permission letter is received, and you have two signed copies of the Articles of Dissolution, and have them “stamped”, and the necessary fee paid, there is a final step.

That is, a final tax return must be filed from the date of the last filed return, and the date of dissolution.

Good Luck!!

 

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Call CRA on your Personal Tax Matters

With the change in phone systems, the phone number remains the same 800-959-8281 but you no longer have the option to press the * key to “speak to an agent” within a few minutes.

Now these are the options:

CRA Personal Line Options Changed when calling 800-959-8281

Locked out of account press 1
Remittance Voucher or other forms 2
RRSP HBP TFSA 3
Tax return, balance 4 other inquiries 5
Other, address, direct deposit, trust 5
The # key returns to main menu.

 

You need your SIN number, and need to key it in to give CRA a “heads up” to who they will be speaking with, and the mechanical voice will let you know the waiting period for you to be in the queue.  It seems to take longer now, but if the service is better, that is the trade off.  Time will fix just about everything.

Jack

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Another Government Bulletin – Are you a Canibis grower?

It’s getting more complicated, if you didn’t already know.  This is the bulletin that details the monthly reporting requirement that CRA insists on.

You must report certain activities of your growing operation if you are in the legitmate business, on a monthly basis, no later than the end of the month following the reporting period.

 

Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest… hmmmm…

Bulleting 105 Mary Wanna

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Government Changed their Phone System

It looks like we can no longer dial the business number 1-800-959-5525 and then press the * key to contact them directly.

Try this:

Calling CRA Business 800-959-5525

After dialing, there are different options to press.
Some that may be of benefit to us are:
– Payroll 3
– GST 4 then press 0 enter 9 digits HST then 1
– Self employed or Corporation 5
– Other 6

First two have to do with registrations or difficulty accessing accounts on line.

 

Jack

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All Deductions, Credits and Expenses

This is the CRA website which lets you put in the line number from  your personal tax return that you would like to research.

For example, line 305 is for other deductions for an eligible dependant.  Do you qualify for it, based on the best information you have, and the little information CRA gives to you, before they come up with a reason to disallow it?

 

Jack

 

All Deductions link – press it

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Bursaries and Scholarships may be Exempt Income Sources

Line 130 – Scholarships, fellowships, bursaries, study grants, and artist’s project grants (awards)

A number of people don’t realize that when they are a full time student, that Scholarships, fellowships, bursaries, grants are exempt from tax, and are reported through a T4A document issued by the payer.
When you file your income tax, you should report the amount received as income, and as income that is exempt.
In order to determine if you would qualify for the exempt status, the easiest way is to access a computer, put canada.ca Link to Canada Government Website in the URL field of the search engine you are using (Chrome, Firefox, etc), and where the search bar appears in the CRA website, put in the word “Line 130”.
From there, just scroll down until you see the detail on Scholarships, etc, and hit the enter key. Within that document, there is the criteria listed and highlighted as a “qualifying student”. Put your cursor over that word, and hit the “enter” key.
You should have enough reading material to determine if you qualify for the exemption, and it will save you time in requesting an adjustment sometime later.

Jack