Rookie Tax Training School: Families, Employees & Investors, January 29

One week until Rookie Tax Training School focused on families, employees and investors. This half day event drills down on key tax filing tips and traps for tax season 2025 and will take a detailed look at the tax forms, including late form releases from CRA, and is ideal for anyone new to personal tax filing and especially valuable for career development in the tax preparation, public accounting or financial services industries. Register now and upskill your team for the upcoming tax season. Your tuition includes access to Canada’s Income Tax Fundamentals Course.

About a third of the largest publicly traded companies in Canada offer their employees stock compensation arrangements. Recently, Shopify announced that they will be overhauling their employees’ compensation arrangements, offering them a choice between cash or stock. But do the recipients of these compensation arrangements truly understand the risks associated with investing in stocks? Are they aware of how these securities fit within their holistic wealth management plan?  It’s a real opportunity to add value as we head into an economic renewal.

As baby boomers age, technology makes it possible for people and businesses to operate globally, and economic changes make it appealing for people and businesses to purchase investment property globally.  As well as the increase in the sharing of financial information between countries, cross border taxation issues become key for cross border employment, entrepreneurship or asset ownership, as does the issue of residency and U.S. citizenship.

New Course Alert: The Digital Practitioner Course (Your Guide to Remote Work) When the pandemic hit, there was a natural surge in employees working from home. In Canada, the percentage of *core-age employees working from home was about 43% in May 2020. As the pandemic subsided, in December 2021, 26% of core-age employees in Canada worked from home, compared with 13% in the United States. Majority of people who are working remotely—want to keep it that way.

Disabled people represent the world’s largest minority.  There are 1.1 Billion people in this category around the world and the reality is that this is a minority group everyone has the potential to join – any time.  Planning for incapacity is therefore a prime-of-life topic that advisors must raise proactively in order to maximize the opportunities for preparedness and importantly, the assistance that may be available through the tax system.

The pandemic has underscored the important role of caregiving in Canadian society.  But even before the pandemic 25% of Canadians aged 15 and older – close to 8 Million people- were involved in caregiving to a family member or friends with a long-term disability or age-related decline.  These caregivers have key unmet needs

In a climate of rising interest rates, Home Equity Lines of Credit (HELCO) and other joint borrowing opportunities can present a new risk for two generations in the family.  Joint borrowers need to be aware of the dangers ahead and the tax consequences; all reasons why that’s an important part of a year-end tax planning conversation.