- What documents and information should a business provide to its accountant in order to file its business taxes, specifically payroll, HST and income tax?
- If you do your bookkeeping yourself, provide a softcopy of your records (eg., Quickbooks or Simply Accounting file)
- A copy of all your Bank statements for the year. Note: if you do your own bookkeeping, then ensure you provide a copy of your year-end bank reconciliation
- A copy of all your business credit card statements for the year. Note: if you do your own bookkeeping, then ensure you provide a copy of your year-end credit card statement bank reconciliation
- Cancelled cheques, cheque stubs and bank deposit book for the year
- Copies of all invoices issued
- List of Accounts Receivables
- List of Bad debts
- List of year-end inventory (including the cost)
- Invoices for capital assets purchased during the year (eg computers, furniture etc)
- Details of assets disposed of during the year (even if you got no money when the asset was disposed of)
- Copies of all expense receipts
- List of Accounts Payable
- Details of all bank loans
- List of all payroll payments during the year showing gross amount, withholdings and net amount paid. You should also indicate how paid (cheque, cash or direct deposit)
- Your accountant should have access to your CRA account data , so it will n ot be necessary to provide CRA correspondence, unless it is of a non-routine nature, and one which your accountant would not have access to
- Mileage log detailing business kilometers driven
- Record of any expenses you paid for the business (out of your personal funds)
- Tips on recordkeeping
- It is very important to have a record keeping system in place from the first day of business operations. It is best practice to consult with your accountant on what records to maintain. The accountant should have readily available, a checklist of record required. This makes the first year of filing much easier, and you are less likely to make mistakes which have to be fixed in later years due to lack of knowledge
- After your tax filing deadline, consider filing your income and expense receipts in “tax” folders, as opposed to putting them in categories. If you are audited, then all the data used in the tax return is in one place. You simply pick up the folder, and hand it to the auditor. You can use tabs to separate the docs in the categories on the tax return
- Manual record keeping – this can be as simple as an accordion folder where you drop all invoices, expenses, bank statements and other required documents, in the separate sections. Then give this folder to the accountant to summarise and use to prepare taxes.
- To reduce accounting bill, you can summarize the receipts for your accountant. This is most applicable to a Sole Proprietor, where the basis of the tax return is your income and expenses, as a full financial statement is not required. However, for a corporation, expense summarization doesn’t help too much, as the basis of your corporate tax return is your Bank statement.
- Electronic recordkeeping is strongly suggested for a corporation. Simply because of the details required to be reported, as well, CRA requires a full financial statement – Income Statement and Balance Sheet (which is not required for Sole Proprietors)
- Stay on top of your recordkeeping
Green Meikle & Smith Chartered Professional Accountants
Authorized to practice public accounting by the Chartered Professional Accountants of Ontario
1020 Matheson Blvd. E. Unit 10
Mississauga, ON L4W 4J9
905-919-3543 Ext 101
647-338-5306 (cell)
