Self-Employed Individuals & GST/HST Registrants

In order to minimize accounting fees, it is important to categorize and total all revenues and expenses. The categories provided in the services questionnaire are only examples of some of the expenses that may be incurred by an individual or self-employed client.

 

We encourage our clients to submit any additional changes or information to the suggested expense categories listed. Please provide all information appropriate to your own circumstance.

 

How to Prepare for a Tax Interview (GST/HST Registrants)

The following is a brief outline on how to prepare for your tax appointment with us to enable our office to prepare your GST/HST returns.

 

Please provide us with the amount of GST/HST installments you remitted during the year.

 

Self-employment income

In order to complete the forms, the following steps should be taken for Ontario residents:

1. For those individuals who have elected to use the quick method of GST/HST accounting, you do not need to segment the amount of GST/HST you collect, unless a portion of this income is earned outside of Ontario.
2. For those individuals using the standard method of GST/HST accounting, do not include GST/HST collected in the reportable income fields of the questionnaire. Please note that T4A's will not include GST/HST collected by the individual.

 

GST/HST Input Tax Credits

Please note that we can extract the GST/HST from your expenses; however, it would be more accurate if you calculate your total GST/HST paid on a receipt by receipt basis.

 

Over the years we noticed that clients found it difficult to extract the GST/HST from their expenses; consequently, we developed a computer program which will do this automatically. Therefore, in most instances you only need to insert the expense figures including GST/HST.

 

Please note for this program to work accurately you must ensure that each expensed item either includes GST/HST or excludes GST/HST. For example, travel expenses could include travel within Canada which will include GST/HST, and foreign travel which excludes GST/HST. In this instance, the two separate travel numbers should be displayed on the questionnaire. If you have any other expenses incurred outside of Canada, please segment these items.