Developing a plan for your estate, including preparing and updating your Will, is the most important thing you can do to protect your family and your legacy. Estate planning is an essential part of a complete financial plan. It is the process by which you strive to arrange your personal, business, legal and tax affairs to achieve a number of objectives. We recognize that the estate planning process can be complex.
Charger Consulting Corporation, recognize that the estate planning process can be complex. We can assist you in developing a plan that incorporates your personal goals, addresses family law and other legal concerns, and provides you and your family with maximum financial benefits through tax savings.
The following are just a few of the benefits that an Estate Plan can help achieve:
Assurance Services
HSP uses a hands-on approach to servicing your business, whether your firm is large, small, public or private. The professional employees of HSP have an in-depth knowledge gained from continuous professional development courses and work experience from a wide range of industries.
The Partners and professional staff of HS & Partners LLP are actively involved in the planning and execution of your firms' audit and accounting needs. Accessibility at senior levels and more face-to-face time with the Partners and professional staff provides you with direct access to the professionals that are most familiar with your business.
Our assurance services can help you meet the challenges of managing risk, firm resources and information. HSP's team will work with you to facilitate your understanding what the risks are and how to face them.
We will keep you up-to-date with relevant financial reporting and related legislative and technical changes throughout the annual cycle, and provide you with the most practical advice to maximize the potential of your business.
Our audit and accounting team is highly skilled in providing traditional and specialized compliance auditing and accounting engagements for corporations as well as for not-for-profit organizations, professionals, self-employed individuals and others. Our team will assist you to determine your specific business needs and to expertly provide the necessary reports and financial information required.
Our specialization in this service area includes the following:
Traditional Accounting Services
Our expertise and proactive approach to personal and corporate tax planning is aimed at providing entrepreneurs with flexible solutions to growing business needs.
Our objective is to provide clients with accurate, relevant and timely tax advice and planning opportunities.
As dedicated professionals, we keep up to date on the latest tax developments in order to provide clients with valuable tax minimization solutions and assist in resolving tax disputes with the Canada Revenue Agency.
HS & Partners LLP tax consulting services is provided by our sister company Charger Consulting Corporation:
As professional advisors, we work with business owners to develop goals and strategies to help their business grow. We strive to provide solutions to increasingly complex financial and operating issues associated with managing growth.
Our goal is to guarantee clients' increased profitability, reduced tax liabilities and maximized net worth.
We achieve this by applying risk management principles to your business operations. Risk Management is a anticipatory measure that companies take to ensure that they are protected from threats to their organization. This can include computer or network safeguards, fraud prevention strategies, minimizing potential insurance liabilities, or any number of security-related precautions.
We assist business owners in identifying their key success factors and focus on making their business more profitable. Our business consulting services include:
The Scientific Research and Experimental Development ("SR&ED") Tax Incentive Program provides companies with significant cash refunds and/or tax credits ranging from thousands to millions of dollars. Canada’s SR&ED program is the best of its kind in the world, offering the most enhanced benefits of any other country.
Most Software, tech and manufacturing companies in Canada qualify.
Charger Consulting Corporation is a business advisory firm and one of our core specializations is SR&ED. We have chartered accountants, tax lawyers and engineers on staff with extensive experience in SR&ED tax incentives. Our goal is to maximize your benefits under this program.
What do we do?
What is the Voluntary Disclosure Program?
The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has policies in place to promote voluntary compliance with tax laws. They accomplish this with their Voluntary Disclosure Program which encourages taxpayers, both at the individual and corporate level, to come forward and report previously unreported income or GST or to file returns that are more than a year passed their normal filing deadline.
The main benefits for taxpayers in using the Voluntary Disclosure Program is that CRA will not undertake criminal prosecutions or impose civil penalties on voluntary disclosures. Clients will still be responsible for the taxes owing.
What is a Tax Audit?
An income tax audit is an inspection and verification of a company's (or an individual's) records and supporting documents conducted by a CRA auditor.
Further to the CRA's Guide for Canadian Small Businesses, an audit usually takes one to two weeks, and involves "an examination of your ledgers, journals, bank accounts, sales invoices, purchase vouchers, and expense accounts." They go on to point out that the audit process may involve touring your business premises, and seeking information and assistance from your employees.
Through our sister company Charger Consulting Corporation is a team of dedicated professionals will work with you through each step of your dealings with the CRA to ensure a smooth audit process and help achieve the best possible outcome.
We can help you build a comprehensive Estate Plan that meets your goals and helps you provide for your beneficiaries. Goals such as your children's education, your family's economic independence, or your support for charities can all be achieved through your Estate Plan. In completing the attached checklists, consider the following issues and opportunities:
Your Will and overall Estate Plan should provide for an orderly distribution of your estate to the intended beneficiaries.
Establishing a Trust for your spouse and/or children can help you realize many tax advantages and preserve assets. Generally, there are two types of Trusts:
A Will is an essential component of the estate planning process. It is the most effective way to ensure that your assets will be managed and distributed according to your wishes.
If a person dies without a Will (Intestate), the government steps in and distributes the assets according to a legislated formula, which rarely represent the wishes of the individual and his or her family. The absence of a Will can also delay the distribution of your estate, resulting perhaps in financial difficulty for the beneficiaries and unnecessary administration costs. Furthermore, the guardians appointed for your children may not be the ones that you would have chosen.
In your Will, you can leave assets outright to your beneficiaries or you can control and distribute assets through a testamentary trust. Such a trust, or multiple trusts, can provide significant long-term tax advantages. It is also a useful vehicle to facilitate the management of assets for minor children or other dependents (for example, the trust can provide for funding the education of children and/or grandchildren). You might also consider such a trust if you wish to provide income for your spouse during his/or her lifetime, but maintain the capital for other beneficiaries upon your spouse's death.
As a powerful tax-planning tool, testamentary trusts can facilitate income-splitting as well. For example if you have a spouse and three children, you could actually establish four separate Trusts, one for each child and one for your spouse. Each child's trust could include that child's children as potential beneficiaries. Since Testamentary Trusts are taxed at the same graduated tax rates as individuals, income can be spread out between the various Trusts and beneficiaries to ensure that as much income as possible is taxed at the lower marginal rates.
We can provide you with the expert advice necessary to ensure that maximum benefit is achieved in Will planning.
The choice of Executor for your Will is very important. Depending on the size and the complexity of your estate, your choices range from selecting a family member to professional Executor. The executor is the individual who will act as your personal representative to ensure that the terms of your Will are carried out.
The Executor
Naming a back-up or contingent executor in the event that the primary executor is unable or unwilling to act is also important.
Your Will should provide specific powers that allow your executor flexibility and discretion over the handling of your estate. The Executor may be given broad powers for such decisions as:
Life insurance is also an important part of an estate plan. It offers the key benefit of providing liquidity to an estate upon death. Liquidity, or cash, is most often required for the following reasons:
Part of a complete Estate Plan includes planning for a possible mental incapacity, or other inability to manage your affairs during your lifetime.
Financial Power of Attorney
A financial Power of Attorney is a legal document that grants the individual you name (the "Attorney") the authority to act on your behalf in financial matters, either temporarily or permanently, if you are unable to do so yourself because of a physical or mental incapacity. Most individuals choose a close friend or family member to be their attorney. You decide how much decision-making authority your Attorney will be given and under what circumstance they may act. If you were to become mentally or physically incapacitated and did not have a valid financial Power of Attorney, a family member would have to apply to the court to request control of your finances from the government.
Personal Care Power of Attorney
A Power of Attorney for Personal Care enables another person to make decisions pertaining to your personal health and welfare, including decisions on medical care and living arrangements, on your behalf should you become incapable of doing so. If you are mentally competent, you have the right to refuse medical treatment. However, if you become mentally incapacitated or terminally unconscious, without a Power of Attorney for personal care outlining your wishes, you may be considered to have given consent to all medical treatment that your doctor considers necessary.
A Power of Attorney is a powerful legal document that comes into force as soon as it is signed and terminates upon your death, at which time your Will takes effect.