Any recommended personal tax companies in Calgary
Apr 14th 2010, 4:28 am
#16
Binned by Muderators
Joined: Jul 2007
Location: White Rock BC
Posts: 11,690
Re: Any recommended personal tax companies in Calgary
Been working hard over the past few days pulling numbers together ahead of a meeting with an accountant we have chosen. For reference the accountant recommended above costs $425 an hour and reckoned he would need 10 hours to do everything so we looked elsewhere as that seemed very steep.
Now that I have most of the pieces of the puzzle I am intrigued as to what to expect since we have some significant losses in 2008 and 2009 in raw numbers. I'm just not sure what that will turn into in terms of a tax return or whether things will be classed somehow differently.
Here's my years rough numbers which i would assume gets split across my wife and I's returns for our rental income:
2006 - break-even - nothing exciting happened this year just regular expenses - mortgage interest, factors, insurance, letting agent
2007 - lost about £1200 - same as 2006
2008 - lost about £8500 - this includes money spent on getting floor redone, replacing boiler and replacing furniture (will this be depreciated or just applied?). Plus we didn't receive 2 months worth of rent we were due - does this get treated as £0 income or something else?.
2009 - lost £3700 - includes painting prior to sale and we recieved no rent despite it being occupied for 4 months
Here's my years rough numbers which i would assume gets split across my wife and I's returns for our rental income:
2006 - break-even - nothing exciting happened this year just regular expenses - mortgage interest, factors, insurance, letting agent
2007 - lost about £1200 - same as 2006
2008 - lost about £8500 - this includes money spent on getting floor redone, replacing boiler and replacing furniture (will this be depreciated or just applied?). Plus we didn't receive 2 months worth of rent we were due - does this get treated as £0 income or something else?.
2009 - lost £3700 - includes painting prior to sale and we recieved no rent despite it being occupied for 4 months
2007 - you can set this loss against other income and so should get a tax refund.
2008 - this becomes a question of whether these expenses income related (repairs and maintenance) or capital expenses to improve the property. Repairs and maintenance are a 100% write off so you usually claim them as such and hope the CRA don't ask too many questions. You can depreciate the furniture if you have a rental profit, but not if you have a loss. The two months worth of rent you didn't get is just zero income.
2009 - again a loss that can be used to reduce other taxable income, except that painting prior to the sale is a capital expense. As a capital expense it is added to the tax cost of the house when you migrated to Canada so it increases your capital loss.
NB - these numbers look horrible, and really that's why we sold. We kept the flat as a back-up in case we decided to return and then from late 2007 onwards hit problem after problem. 
On the capital part of it - I managed to get a valuation from our estate agent which was actually a few thousand more than we sold for - so our capital loss just keeps adding up!
On the capital part of it - I managed to get a valuation from our estate agent which was actually a few thousand more than we sold for - so our capital loss just keeps adding up!
Get the voluntary disclosure sorted first, then file T1 adjustments for 2006-2009. If you pay tax at 32% you are looking at a refund in excess of $5,000.
May 3rd 2010, 4:27 am
#17
Procrastinating
Thread Starter
Joined: Nov 2007
Location: Calgary, Canada
Posts: 475
Re: Any recommended personal tax companies in Calgary
Quick update since I've now filed our '09 taxes with help from a professional. Cost was $150/hr for 4 hours work to do 2 returns. Thought that wasn't bad, and I really appreciated all the help in here as it helped me frame everything so that I was able to present a fairly detailed summary of our numbers. 
Interesting thing that our accountant did do was turn 60% of our loss from the sale of our property into income loss for 2009 through a CCA calculation. This leaves us with less of a capital loss to roll forward, but figure a $ in our pocket today is better than a $ for later.
My latest musings are that we have almost "benefited" from the drop in the FX rate, even though we still have £ left in the UK. Technically our absolute best situation from a cash viewpoint would have been to have sold prior to leaving and transferred all cash at a better FX rate of 2.06ish in 2006. Since that didn't happen we have still ended up being able to take advantage of the drop.
The way I see it is that we lost minimal £s from the sale of our house, however lost lots of $s due to the FX drop. The good thing for us, is that our loss is calculated on the full value of the house, and actual loss to us is really only on the equity that we can move (less than 50%). So from a tax viewpoint we end up with a big loss which equals tax money back for us, which in turn buys us time to wait for the FX uptick ($2 in 5 years anyone?). Then even when that comes and I have a capital gain to declare I still have enough loss from the house sale calculation that I get that gain without being taxed.
Thought it was interesting as I'm trying to stay positive while I sit and stare at the crappy FX rate!
Interesting thing that our accountant did do was turn 60% of our loss from the sale of our property into income loss for 2009 through a CCA calculation. This leaves us with less of a capital loss to roll forward, but figure a $ in our pocket today is better than a $ for later.
My latest musings are that we have almost "benefited" from the drop in the FX rate, even though we still have £ left in the UK. Technically our absolute best situation from a cash viewpoint would have been to have sold prior to leaving and transferred all cash at a better FX rate of 2.06ish in 2006. Since that didn't happen we have still ended up being able to take advantage of the drop.
The way I see it is that we lost minimal £s from the sale of our house, however lost lots of $s due to the FX drop. The good thing for us, is that our loss is calculated on the full value of the house, and actual loss to us is really only on the equity that we can move (less than 50%). So from a tax viewpoint we end up with a big loss which equals tax money back for us, which in turn buys us time to wait for the FX uptick ($2 in 5 years anyone?). Then even when that comes and I have a capital gain to declare I still have enough loss from the house sale calculation that I get that gain without being taxed.
Thought it was interesting as I'm trying to stay positive while I sit and stare at the crappy FX rate!
