Opportunity: Canadian Dollar Stabilizes, Somewhat

Things have started to turn around for the Canadian dollar in the second quarter of 2025. It hit a 22 year low in January of 2025. Investors and property owners, who have been swooning at the high burn rate in their travel plans and property maintenance abroad, may wish to consider recent more positive trends and consider some risk mitigation opportunities now that the dollar is stabilizing somewhat.  

When a business hires an employee, it is important for that employee to be “formally” hired, that is with a role description, a rate of pay or salary level and a statement of expectations that define the relationship between the employer and employee,  all well documented and filed in case of audit from the CRA. This is particularly important post-COVID, as CRA will be auditing the Canada Emergency Wage Supplement (CEWS) payments businesses received, right up to the end of 2023.   But it is also very important if you have hired family members.

What’s the biggest difference between a co-borrower and a cosigner? It relates to the degree of investment in the loan. Here are the details:

In the last federal budget, the government proposed to allow Canadian Controlled Private Corporations to claim 100% CCA in the year of acquisition for assets purchased after April 18, 2021, to a maximum of $1,500,000.  However, legislation has yet to be introduced to implement that change.  That’s turning out to be a big problem for tax advisors and their clients.  Here’s why:

Most people know that when you miss filing a tax return your family will miss out on receiving the Canada Child Benefit.  However, did you know that you can retroactively claim the CCB by filing those missed returns?  How far back you can go, however, depends on what type of CCB you file for. 

Small businesses are critical to the health of the Canadian economy.  According to a recent study by the Government of Canada, small businesses (1-99 employees as defined by the Government) represented 97.9% of all enterprises in Canada. According to the same study, these businesses employed 8.4 million individuals in 2019 or 68.8% of the private labour force. In addition, small business contributed 41.9% to the Gross Domestic Product generated by the private sector in 2016.  Now that we are in past-pandemic mode, understanding the needs of small businesses will pay off in better tax and financial planning solutions. 

You may ask yourself, what is the difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance?