How to Prepare for Your 2021 Taxes

Important Dates and Deadlines

Our team knows that being aware of when payments are due is vital for your business. What deadlines you need to know depends on your business. If any of these dates happen during a weekend or holiday, then it is not late if it is received the next business day. For a sole proprietorship and partnership:

The 15th of each month

Payroll deductions for your employees’ remuneration, including with what you contribute or their Canadian Pension Plan (CPP), and also Employment Insurance (EI) premiums

The 15th of each quarter

Your instalment payments for your CPP contributions and your taxes are due on the 15th of the last month in each quarter if you are self-employed. The specific deadlines are:

• March 15th
• June 15th
• September 15th
• December 15th

Last day of February

Your T4 and T4A slips and their Summary form need to be filed and the slips should be distributed to your employees.

March 31st

If you are part of a partnership that doesn’t include a corporation, then this is the deadline to file your partnership information return

April 30th

The deadline to pay any taxes you owe (this includes self-employed businesses). For any business that is not a self-employed individual, this is the income tax and benefit return deadline.

June 15th

Income tax and benefit deadline for self-employed individuals and their spouses or common-law partners.

December 31st

This is when to pay your current-year instalment payment.

For corporations, the previous deadlines are useful to your business as well with these differences:

Monthly or Quarterly

Corporations can either pay instalments at the end of each month or the end of each quarter.

Two months after your tax year-end

Deadline for when your corporation income tax payable is due

Three months after your tax year-end

If you are a corporation claiming the small business deduction in Canada, this is when your corporation income tax payable is due

Six months after your tax year-end

The corporation’s T2 Corporation Income Tax Return must be filed.

Documents to Save

Knowing what documents you need to prepare can be a daunting task. You will also need to provide different tax documents depending on if you have employees or use contractors.  These are documents you will require for your taxes and is also recommended you store long term.

• Deposit Slips
• Bank Statements
• Income Records
  • Sales Invoices
  • Receipts
  • Bank deposit slips
  • Fee statements
  • Contracts
  • Cash register tapes
• Expense records
  • Make sure you get and store any receipt you get that is a purchase for your business
• Property records
  • Needs to have the date the property was sold or traded, and also the amount.
• GST/HST records
• Payroll records
  • These include the hours worked by each employee
  • What you withheld for CPP, EI and also taxes

These are only some of the documents you will need for your taxes. More may be required if you make charitable contributions, or your business is a Corporation. For each of these documents, it is recommended to store these documents for at least six years at your business or also your home.

Using your time effectively

For many businesses, keeping track of all of this data can be too much and also too time consuming. Our team of professional bookkeepers want to help you save time in your business. We will organize, keep track of and provide reports based on your records. This is also incredibly useful during tax time. This allows you the time to work on improving your business. If you want to learn more, contact us today, we want to help!