Hope everyone’s has gotten through this April Fool’s day with a healthy dose of humour, but otherwise relatively unscathed :)

Sadly, I do not have any April Fool’s pranks for you (humour is in short supply for many accountants during tax season). Instead, I bring you information on the deadly serious topic of taxes.

Whether you are an employee or a small business owner, you can claim home office expenses as long as you worked from home, although the rules are a bit different.

As we get closer to the tax deadline, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about some tax concepts, over the next few newsletters,and address some of the more frequent questions that I get. The most fundamental of these concepts, and one that is largely misunderstood, relates to how income is taxed in Canada.

I recently had a consultation with a client who is having trouble navigating her accounting and tax obligations. On top of it all, she recently received a letter from Revenue Quebec advising her that she owed a significant amount of money plus penalties. As a consequence she is feeling overwhelmed and unsure if she can handle the financial aspects of her business. She is bright and intelligent and certainly more than capable of doing so - but it doesn’t take much, especially where it comes to taxes and unpleasant missives from the government, to feel a loss of control.

Anyone who has been to a grocery store, to a gas pump or to buy regular household items in recent months will likely have noticed that prices have gone up somewhat markedly. This is largely due to the pandemic which has brought about disruption in the supply chain (basically the many steps in the process in the production and distribution of goods), increase in oil prices, labour shortages and increased buying after people have been stuck at home for many months. Consequently, inflation, which has been very low for many years, experienced a significant uptick in 2021 . This has governments around the world trying to figure out a solution to a difficult problem.