Budget-friendly Healthcare Accounting for Canadian Businesses

Property tax is billed by your municipality, not the CRA, so payment goes to the city or town that issued the bill. Most municipalities accept online or telephone banking once you add the property tax roll number as a payee, pre-authorised instalment plans, cheque, or payment at your bank. If your mortgage lender collects tax with your mortgage payment, the lender remits it for you. Condominium owners get their own bill, separate from monthly condo fees.

Payroll treats each cheque as though you earned that amount every period, so a bonus, overtime, retroactive raise or an extra shift makes the cheque look like a higher annual income and more tax comes off it. A change in pay frequency, a new TD1, or a taxable benefit added mid-year does the same. CPP and EI stop for the year once their maximums are reached, so take-home often rises later on. Your return reconciles the total.

No. Property tax is a municipal levy based on your property’s assessed value, not a charge for a service you consume, so it is not a utility bill even where a city bills water on the same statement. The difference matters when you claim expenses: for a rental or a home office, property tax and utilities are separate lines, each apportioned to the business-use share. Keep the municipal tax bill itself as your record.

A real CRA agent will ask you to confirm identifying details, including your social insurance number, once you have called them or after they reach you about a known file. What the CRA does not do is demand your SIN, banking details or a payment over a call you were not expecting, threaten arrest, or ask for gift cards or crypto. If a call feels wrong, hang up and phone the CRA back on a number from canada.ca.

Yes. The CRA answers individual, business and benefit enquiries by phone, and its Contact the CRA page lists the current numbers and hours for each line. Have your social insurance number or business number, a recent return and your notice of assessment ready, because the agent will verify your identity before discussing an account. For account details, balances and slips, My Account often answers the question faster than the phone.

Yes. The CRA does telephone individuals and businesses about balances owing, missing returns, audits and benefit reviews, and an agent may leave a voicemail asking you to call back. It will not threaten arrest or deportation, demand payment by gift card, e-transfer or crypto, or pressure you to stay on the line. Check My Account for the same message before acting, and call the CRA back on a number from canada.ca.

Different deductions, not different rules. Withholding follows the TD1 forms you filed, so a colleague claiming more credits, tuition or a disability amount has less tax taken off. Other causes are a different province of employment, a second job where each employer applies the basic personal amount, taxable benefits added to your pay, a higher salary reaching the next bracket, and pay-period timing. CPP and EI also stop at their annual maximums, which higher earners reach sooner.

Yes, indirectly. Provincial assessment authorities value a home from its characteristics, including lot size, living area, age, construction quality, bedrooms and bathrooms, and recent sales of comparable homes nearby. Your municipality then multiplies that assessed value by its rate. So a bigger lot or more finished square footage generally means a higher assessment and a higher bill, while bedroom count alone matters less than total area. Your assessment notice lists the details on record.

Only for specific purposes. Fees paid to collect or establish a right to salary, wages, a pension, severance or support amounts, and fees to object to or appeal a CRA assessment, are claimed in the deductions section of the T1, on the line the CRA's guide names. Legal costs of earning business or rental income belong on the T2125 or the rental statement. Fees to acquire property are usually added to its cost instead of deducted.

Basic groceries are zero-rated, meaning no GST or HST applies to staples such as bread, milk, eggs, produce, meat and unprepared ingredients. Tax applies once a food falls outside that category: candy, snack foods, carbonated and sweetened drinks, bakery items sold in small quantities, and anything prepared or heated for immediate eating. Provincial rules can add or remove tax on top of the federal treatment, so the province of supply matters.

There is no single figure, because the amount depends on your income, your province and which taxes are counted. Studies that quote an average usually bundle income tax, payroll contributions, sales tax and property tax together, which is why published numbers differ so widely. For your own position, divide the total tax shown on your notice of assessment by your total income to get your effective rate, then compare that with later years rather than with a national average.

Holding a share outright cannot leave you owing money. The worst outcome is that it becomes worthless. You can end up owing money if you bought on margin, sold short, or invested with borrowed funds, because the debt survives the loss. On the tax side, a fall in value creates nothing to report; a loss only crystallises when you dispose of the shares, and a capital loss is applied against capital gains rather than against ordinary income.