A Challenge for New Clients: How to Choose a Trusted Advisor

If you’re in business for yourself, you have a unique opportunity to build wealth in an asset class that others don’t have: equity in a business enterprise that some day may be sold for millions of dollars. In addition, that business can spin off income for family members that can provide significant tax advantages, done well. Understanding how to realize on this asset requires the help of a trusted financial advisory team. Who should be on that team and how do you find them? This is a challenge your next new business clients may wrestle with. Here are some tips on how you can open discussions to help them:

Dynamic Elise Pulver, LLB, will address significant and unexpected changes to the Estate and Administration Tax Act, at the Distinguished Advisor Workshop, June 22 in Toronto.   

Last week, Federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver announced in the House of Commons that the government is open to allowing Canadians to make additional voluntary contributions to their CPP in order in increase their CPP savings.

Parents with children under age 18 living at home will be receiving a lump sum of $420 per child with their July Child Tax Benefit payment. This lump sum represents the additional $60 per month per child payable as of January 2015.

CRA has applied a net-worth assessment against your client, who now comes to you for help . . . and they are emotional and scared. What do you do first?

The most recent economic data is indeed atrocious, as Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz predicted in England late last year.

Last week’s KBR reported on a recent Statistics Canada study, Changes in Debt and Assets of Canadian Families, 1999 to 2012, that confirmed a trend that Canadians are carrying more debt than ever before.