Accounting for your industry
Accounting for professional corporations.
Tax and accounting for doctors, dentists, lawyers and other licensed professionals, including how you pay yourself and what you keep in the corporation.
- Salary vs. dividends
- Corporate tax
- Financial statements
Questions worth getting ahead of
- Deciding how to pay yourself: salary, dividends or both
- Reconciling billing and collection streams, including shared clinic or firm costs
- Separating the practice’s reporting from your personal return
Plan around the way your practice is structured
A regulated professional corporation has its own rules about who can own shares and what the corporation can do. Explain the ownership, the professional requirements and any plans for associates, hiring or succession, and coordinate structural changes with your regulator and legal advisers. The accounting scope then fits the practice you actually run.
See beyond the top-line billing number
A busy practice is not automatically a healthy one. Bring information about billing, outstanding receivables, staff costs, shared overhead and equipment so reporting can distinguish work performed from amounts invoiced and cash actually collected. Keep patient and client information out of ordinary financial inquiries.
Coordinate the corporation with your personal tax
How much to take as salary, how much as dividends and what to leave in the corporation are decisions made together with your personal return, not after it. Raise major changes early: a new location, equipment purchase, associate arrangement or change in ownership may need accounting, tax and legal input before implementation.
Support to discuss with Versa
Corporate tax
Your T2 filed accurately and on time, with year-end planning that keeps more money in your business.
What it involves AccountingFinancial statements
Year-end financial statements your bank, landlord or investors can rely on. (Formerly called Notice to Reader.)
What it involves TaxPersonal tax
Your personal return done right, whether it’s simple or includes self-employment, rental or investment income.
What it involves AccountingBookkeeping
Monthly books in QuickBooks or Xero, reconciled to the bank and ready for tax time. We can also set up or clean up your system.
What it involves AccountingPayroll
Your team paid correctly and on time, with source deductions, remittances and year-end slips handled for you.
What it involvesStart with the way your business works
Tell the team how you earn revenue, which systems you use, how current your records are and what decision or deadline is coming next. That context helps identify the work to discuss — rather than assuming every business in your industry needs the same package.