Business owners
Financial planning for incorporated business owners.
Your accountant closes the year. Your lawyer papers the structure. This is the part that decides what the company is actually for, and nobody owns it until someone does.
Who this fits
Four ways this tends to look.
The owner-operator
One company, a handful of staff, retained earnings growing faster than the plan for them.
The professional corporation
Physician, dentist, engineer, lawyer. High income, narrow window, no pension.
The partner in a firm
Draws you don’t fully control, and a buy-sell agreement nobody has explained.
Five to ten years from an exit
Still the point where structure changes the outcome. Two years out, most of it is fixed.
The problems this actually solves
Named plainly, because this is what people search for.
Salary versus dividends
Set for the year ahead, with RRSP room, CPP and the corporate tax bill weighed together.
Cash sitting in the corporation
What it should be invested in, and what it costs to leave it in a savings account.
The passive income rule
How investment income grinds down your small business deduction, and how to stay clear.
Holdco structure
Whether you need one, what it protects, and what it costs to run.
TFSA, RRSP, IPP, or invest in the corporation
The four doors, compared against your real income and your real timeline.
Insurance inside the corporation
Where it belongs, where it doesn’t, and how it meets the estate.
Exit and succession
What the sale needs to produce, and the work that happens years before it.
Estate and corporate wind-up
The tax bill your family inherits with the shares, and the ways to reduce it.
Group Retirement Plans
And for the people you employ
A group plan is the cheapest retention tool most owners aren’t using, and the one benefit staff can see the value of every payday. I set it up, and I do the part employees actually need: explaining it.
- Why owners put one in: retention, recruiting, and a deductible contribution with no CPP or EI.
- The options in plain terms: Group RRSP, DPSP, Group TFSA, and the legal minimum.
- Who does what, so it stays about five minutes per pay period once it’s running.
What changes for you
The result, in four lines.
- A compensation decision made once a year, on purpose.
- Corporate cash with a job, sized against the passive income threshold.
- One document your accountant and lawyer both work from.
- An exit number, and a list of what to fix before it.
Who this isn’t for
If you want someone to trade a portfolio, or a view on where markets go next, I’ll point you somewhere better. If you have no corporation and no plans for one, most of what I do won’t apply. Saying so early saves us both a meeting.