2

As a full time employee, certain costs are deductible from personal income. (e.g cost of public transit pass.)

When the full time employee becomes an independent contractor, do these expenses still get deducted from the salary that he pays himself from his corporation? Or do they get deducted from corporation earnings? My guess is it is the latter.

Improve this question
1
  • 2
    There's a false premise in your question. Public transit costs are not deductible from personal income for a full-time employee. There is a tax credit. This is not the same as a deduction. A deduction is worth more than a tax credit (a deduction reduces your tax at your marginal rate, whereas a credit offsets some of your tax at the lowest rate.)
    – Chris W. Rea
    Commented Sep 30, 2013 at 12:53

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
5

Firstly, the cost of getting to or from your normal place of work is NOT a deductible expense in Ontario. Unless you can show that you use that transit pass for travelling to work OTHER THAN to and from your normal place of work, you can't claim it.

Who deducts the cost of travel in other circumstances depends on who pays it. If the corporation pays, the corporation deducts. I believe that if the company pays your transport costs then that counts as part of your salary and you would pay tax on it (the company can consider it an expense).

EDIT: As Chris Rea points out, there is a tax credit for transit passes (which can be claimed no matter why you bought them). It's a personal tax credit only, so you have to have bought them and you claim the credit. Whether you are a contractor or an employee or unemployed makes no difference.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .