Explore Small Business Finance Topics
Discover our most popular topics for Canadian solopreneurs and small business owners. From income tax and GST/HST to QuickBooks tutorials and managing your business finances, these guides are designed to help you move from financial uncertainty to financial confidence.
Click on any topic and scroll down to see related articles.
📑Canadian Income Tax
Guidance on filing and planning your Canadian taxes, from T1 and T2 returns to instalments
📊Managing Business Finances
From cash flow to pricing and metrics — learn to manage your business finances with confidence.
🏢 Canadian Business Structure
Should you incorporate? Stay informed on sole proprietorships, corporations, and registrations.
💰 GST/HST & QST
Understand how to register, file, and maximize input tax credits while avoiding common mistakes.
🧾 Guides and Tutorials
Practical accounting processes like reconciliations, journal entries, and reporting.
📝 Deductions & Expenses
Learn which expenses are deductible and how to track them for maximum tax savings.
Quebec Taxes & Business
QST, Revenu Québec filings, Quebec payroll, and provincial rules every entrepreneur should know.
👤 Paying Yourself
Salary vs dividends, management fees, and how to pay yourself from your corporation or small business.
💻 QuickBooks Online & Tools
Tutorials, guides and time-saving tips for using QuickBooks Online effectively.
🏦 Money & Personal Finance
Personal finance strategies for entrepreneurs, from RRSPs to saving for taxes.
What is Capital Cost Allowance and How Does it Impact Your Business
Frequently a client of mine will purchase a high ticket item such as a computer or a piece of furniture and will simply show it as an expense on their profit and loss. Since you purchased something that relates to your business, it should be considered to be a deduction and classified as an expenses.
Unfortunately, accountants and revenue agencies do not see it this way. From their perspective, an item that is purchased for a business, whose value extends beyond one year, is actually an asset that should be depreciated over the useful life of the asset. In other words, the expense that you can claim for the asset is only the portion of the asset that is used in the year that you claim it.
While accountants refer to the amount of the asset that is expensed each year as depreciation, Revenue Canada refers to this as capital cost allowance or CCA.
Accounting and Tax Treatment of Computer Hardware and other Fixed Assets
Investment in capital items such as computers, furniture, equipment and cars can cause confusion for small business owners. Since these are purchases that affect the cash flow of the business, it seems that they should be accounted for as expenses similar to office supplies or rent. There are however special rules for any acquisitions that qualify as “fixed assets”. A fixed asset, simply speaking, is an acquisition that provides a long term economic benefit to the business. In other words, any business purchases that has a useful life that extends beyond one year, will usually qualify as a fixed asset. Below I discuss the accounting and tax treatment of fixed assets.