All owner-operated businesses in Canada

2026-10-13

Your CEBA loan is due in full on 31 December. Nobody is going to move the date this time

If you still owe money on your CEBA loan, the whole balance is due on Thursday 31 December 2026. That is 79 days from today. There is no forgiveness left, no refinancing window, and the program's own FAQ says the deadline is final and cannot be changed. On a $60,000 loan you have been paying about $250 a month in interest since January 2024 and the $60,000 itself is still there, waiting. This page does three things. It tells you exactly what you owe and why, it puts the three ways out on real numbers so you can pick one by the middle of November, and it explains what actually happens, step by step, if you cannot pay, because that part is written down and most owners have never read it.

2026-09-15

Your 2027 EI bill is set. For your staff it is pennies, and your own line may not belong there at all

Next year's Employment Insurance numbers landed on 14 September, and the headline is the least useful part of them. The rate moved a single cent. The earnings ceiling moved $1,900. For a small team that adds up to roughly the price of one decent dinner across the whole year. The line genuinely worth five minutes is the one with your own name on it, because if you control more than 40 percent of the voting shares of your own company, the Act says that employment was never insurable, and the premiums coming off it are buying you nothing at all.

2026-08-25

From 1 October your bookkeeper adds 7% PST, and you cannot claim it back

Open the folder where your bookkeeping invoices live. Whatever the last one said, the next one after 1 October 2026 says the same number plus 7%. British Columbia is putting provincial sales tax on accounting and bookkeeping that day, and the part that matters is not the rate. It is that PST has no equivalent of the GST refund you are used to, so this one stays on your profit line for good. There is also a legal way to keep two months of it off your bill, and that door shuts on 30 September.

2026-08-19

Ten cents a litre comes back on 8 September. Your own tank is the small part

Labour Day, Monday 7 September, is the last day of the federal fuel tax holiday. From Tuesday 8 September the excise tax is back at 10 cents a litre on gasoline and 4 cents on diesel, and nobody is going to send you a letter about it. The honest arithmetic first, so you do not overreact: a van doing 300 km a week pays roughly $187 a year more. The reason to keep reading is not your own tank. It is the fuel surcharge line on your supplier invoices, and the fact that gasoline is already 25.7% dearer than a year ago with this tax sitting at zero.

2026-08-05

Salary or dividends? The tax difference is the small part of this decision

Here is the short answer most owners never get told: the total tax you pay is usually close either way, and the parts that are not close are CPP, RRSP room, and from January, which province you are in. Salary means a CPP bill of up to $9,292.90 in 2026 and you fund both halves of it yourself. Dividends mean none of that, and no RRSP room at all, ever. This page gives you the arithmetic on all three, plus the two provincial changes landing on 1 January 2027, so you walk into your accountant's office asking a better question.

2026-07-20

Canada scrapped the tax hike on selling your business. Here is what you actually keep in 2026

If selling up is anywhere on your horizon, the tax picture for 2026 is friendlier than the last two years of headlines made it sound. The hike that was coming for anyone with a big gain got cancelled, the rate stays where it was, and there is a $1.25 million exemption that can take your tax bill on a sale to zero. Here is what you actually keep when you sell, and the one structural catch that decides whether you get any of it.