54
You can make a contingent offer: "I will buy this house if I sell my own." In a highly competitive environment, contingent offers tend to be ignored. (Another commentator described such a contingency clause as synonymous with "Please Reject Me".)
You can get a bridge loan: you borrow money for a short term, at punishingly high interest. If your house ...
15
Generally incorrect.
Some of your mortgage payment is interest, and some is repayment of principal. When it comes to deducting your rental property's expenses against its income, you generally aren't permitted to deduct the repayment of loan principal.
So, no, $1600 rent and $1600 mortgage payment (ignoring all else) is not break-even — rather, you ...
15
The two most common scenarios are:
You put an offer on a house which is conditional on you selling your own house first.
You sell your house with the condition that you will rent it from the new owner until you purchase a new house.
Since you have more control of timing when you are the buyer compared to when you are the seller, #1 is probably more common, ...
13
This option is useful if for any reason you think you will have a lower taxable income in 2015 than 2014, or you can arrange for that to happen. Retirement is an obvious case, but others might include:
Intending to take maternity or paternity leave
Planning on moving to a lower paid or unpaid job (such as home-maker)
Wishing to put the bonus in an RRSP but ...
13
A bridge loan (or bridging loan) is designed for exactly this circumstance. They're short-term loans (6 months is common) designed to help home-buyers to bridge the gap between buying and selling.
MoneySupermarket defines them like this:
Bridging loans are designed to help people complete the purchase of a property before selling their existing home by ...
12
(In my answer, I say "you". I realise you are asking for a friend.)
You say that the lawyer asked for several thousand dollars up-front as a retainer. This is fairly normal.
Lawyers generally charge either a flat fee, a percentage, or an hourly rate plus expenses. Percentages are unusual in a divorce and are banned in many jurisdictions. Flat-fee divorces ...
12
If you can qualify for two mortgages, this is certainly possible. For this you can talk to a banker.
However, most people do not qualify for two mortgages so they go a different route. They make offers on a new home with a contingency to sell the existing home. A good Realtor will walk you through this and any possible side effects.
Keep in mind that ...
6
There is no simple rule like "you can/can't spend more/less than $X per person." Instead there is a reasonableness test. There is such a thing as an audit of just your travel and entertainment expenses - I know because I've had one for my Ontario corporation.
I've deducted company Christmas parties, and going-away dinners for departing employees, without ...
6
The catch is that you're doing a form of leveraged investing. In other words, you're gambling on the stock market using money that you've borrowed. While it's not as dangerous as say, getting money from a loan shark to play blackjack in Vegas, there is always the chance that markets can collapse and your investment's value will drop rapidly. The amount of ...
6
In Canada, you have the option of claiming depreciation expense, called capital cost allowance (CCA), it is not required. At time of sale, any CCA that you have claimed is recaptured and taxed as regular income (so long as sale price is >= to your original purchase price). If you elected not to claim CCA, you are not subject to recapture.
So you missed out ...
6
The current mortgaged owner would typically not have the right to sell any portion of the house without approval from the bank. The bank doesn't "own" the house through the mortgage, but they do have a series of rights that, in some cases, look similar to ownership.
Remember that a mortgage is just a loan that uses a house as collateral, to reduce the risk ...
6
There is nothing confusing about this though it may feel unfair.
First, there is no such thing as a "primary property" in Canadian tax law. You seem to feel that if you only own one property, it's your primary property, and thus exempt from capital gains taxes. This is not correct.
There is a "principal residence." You can tell right away from the name ...
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 ...
5
There's also the option to put most of your stuff into storage and rent an apartment or go to an extended stay hotel. Some apartments have month-by-month options at a higher rate, though you may need to ask around.
I've known some people to use this as their primary plan because it was easier for them to keep the house clean and ready to show when it's ...
4
How would the RRSP know where the money came from?
You have two separate financial operations going on:
You invest some money, within the limits set by the law, in a Tax Free Savings Account. Near the end of the year, you take the money, plus interest, out of the account. As you may guess by the name, you need not report the interest as income. There are ...
4
The "Pensionable Earnings" referred to in box 26 means the amount of your income that counts towards determining your CPP (or QPP for Quebec) contributions. For many this will be the same amount as box 14, but if your income exceeds the maximum pensionable earnings amount ($52500 for 2014 tax year) then you will instead just see $52500 in box 26.
Read more ...
4
If your business name is your name, you are automatically considered a sole-proprietorship and any income you generate and expenses you incur can be calculated on your personal tax return. You can use QuickTax Home & Business tax software to lead you through the steps; you don't even need an accountant.
One drawback of a sole-proprietorship in your name ...
4
Yes, it's normal. If you "buy" your own disability insurance with after tax money, any payout you get is non taxable. If your employer "buys" your disability insurance with their own money, any payout you get is taxable. Since the payout is not 100% of your pre-disability income, most folks strongly prefer that the payout be non taxable.
To achieve this, I ...
3
Prop (proprietary) traders trade using huge amounts of a bank's money (i.e. other people's money) so the reason why they have such low commissions (and they certainly do) is that the firms for which they work negotiate low commissions as the quantities and volumes (as they also trade very frequently) will be high and so the total commission will be very high....
3
In Ontario, common law marriage requires 3 years of cohabitation, and doesn't give rights to property (which remains separate). I'd say in your situation you can still file as single, but I'd suggest asking your tax accountant to be sure.
3
The CRA's GST/HST information page links to a page titled "Income Levels", which states:
If your family net income amount is equal to or exceeds the amount indicated in the table below, you will not be entitled to a GST/HST credit payment.
For a single person, you aren't eligible for the credit if your income exceeds $42,641, per the table in the second ...
3
Get an accountant. Now. There are many subtle things that you do not know especially if you are just starting with your own corporation. There is also an issue of corporate tax return that you will have to face pretty soon. You should be looking for accountant that does accounting for corporations, there are companies specializing in small business.
I do not ...
3
You need not "absorb" the GST/HST you pay but aren't recovering from your non-Canadian end clients.
You should be able to claim input tax credits for GST/HST your corporation pays to a supplier. Your input tax credits can exceed the GST/HST collected by your company, resulting in a net refund paid by CRA to your corporation. This would typically be the case ...
3
First off, the basics on HST/GST:
You don't need to collect HST, if you don't want to, until you hit 30k in a particular three month period (assuming you're not regularly passing $30k). You then need to collect on the sale that takes you over $30k plus all sales after that. See the H&R Block page on GST/HST for example:
[B]usiness goes through ...
3
The capital gain is based on sale price minus purchase price. The amount of mortgage is irrelevant.
In your example the gain is $300k. You would pay that times the appropriate rate.
You can claim deductions for expenses incurred in running the property, including mortgage interest paid, repairs etc.
3
As the other answers suggest, there are a number of ways of going about it and the correct one will be dependent on your situation (amount of equity in your current house, cashflow primarily, amount of time between purchase and sale).
If you have a fair amount of equity (for example, $50K mortgage remaining on a house valued at $300K), I'll propose an ...
3
If you're living in a market where some houses are going for $150K over asking, then you MUST buy before you sell. In a seller's market, you will get multiple offers on your current house when you decide to sell, it will sell for (well) over asking, and you can dictate possession dates. You do not need to worry about selling your own home, if you have a ...
3
So the main reason that you aren't getting answers is that the question is not really answerable on this site without putting a lot of details about the expenses of your company online. Even then you will need someone who specializes in Canadian taxes to go through those details to be sure. Most of those people feel like they should be paid a decent amount ...
3
In Canada and the U.S., you can dial 2-1-1 on your phone to talk to someone about assistance programs. These phones are usually staffed by the United Way.
Besides the call-in service, they also maintain websites with information about assistance programs:
Canada: 211.ca
U.S.: 211.org
These websites will direct you to more localized websites for help in ...
3
Say I Sell my investment property house for 500k and bought it for
250k. Leaving me 250k profit.
So far so good.
I'd be taxed on 50% of that correct: 250/2 = 125k taxed. and 125k
Profit.
No. 50% of your profit counts as taxable income. 50% of it is tax free. So $125K of the profit is taxable, but that doesn't mean you pay $125K tax.
So you add $...
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