Our Biggest Partner in Life
If you are a business owner:
1. You are a tax collector (payroll taxes, GST, PST).
2. The government is your business partner (corporate taxes).
As a family, taxes are often your largest expense:
1. Income tax (as high as 45.7% of every dollar you earn).
2. Sales taxes (GST, PST).
3. Property taxes, and so on.
Fortunately, the government has provided different vehicles to help us plan when we pay our taxes (RRSP, TFSA, pensions, IPPs). These can all be great vehicles to help us defer, smooth out and/or lower our tax bills.
They also provide some incentives when investing in higher risk investments (dividend tax credit, capital gains tax, venture capital, private equity).
The key in all of this is planning how best to generate income in retirement; and prior to that, how do we defer tax and possibly even reduce it. For business owners this becomes all the more challenging with the added challenge of how best to get money out of their company. There are several additional tools available to help business owners with this added layer of complexity.
If you or someone you know would benefit from a review of how best to allocate your investments to be tax efficient, give us a call.