For lawyers and advisors
The tax side of your client's file
For estate lawyers, mortgage brokers and wealth managers whose clients need a CPA on the tax work. I handle the returns, elections and CRA correspondence, keep you informed with your client's consent, and send the client back to you for everything in your lane.
Your clients' tax problems tend to land on your desk first: an executor asking what is owed before distributing, a borrower whose returns are two years behind, an investor with a corporation full of retained earnings and no plan to get them out. You need someone you can hand the tax side to without worrying how it will be handled or whether your client will come back.
I am a sole practitioner in Woodbridge, a CPA, CA with CPA Canada's In-Depth Tax certification, and I serve clients in English and Italian. Here is how I work with each kind of referral partner, and what happens when you send someone my way.
You handle probate and the legal administration; I handle the tax file: the terminal T1 and any rights or elective returns, the estate's T3 returns, the graduated rate estate designation, post-mortem planning for private company shares, including the subsection 164(6) loss carryback, and the clearance certificate request.
Where the two sides have to agree on timing, we agree on it early: how much to hold back from interim distributions, when the first T3 year-end falls, which estate carries the GRE designation where there are multiple wills, and when final returns will be assessed so the clearance certificate can be requested. Estate and trust tax →
Self-employed and incorporated borrowers are usually stuck on paperwork: returns not yet filed, a Notice of Assessment that has not arrived, corporate statements that are a year old, or a balance owing to the CRA that a lender wants cleared. I get the returns filed and the corporate year-end done so the documents your lender asks for exist.
For owner-managers, how they pay themselves also changes what a lender sees. Dividends, salary and income left in the corporation each show up differently, and we can talk with your client about that ahead of the next application. What I prepare is accurate to the tax position; I cannot shape the numbers to fit an approval. Unfiled years and CRA balances →
When a client invests through a corporation, the investment plan and the tax plan have to fit together. I provide the numbers you need to advise well: capital dividend account balances, refundable tax, retained earnings, how much investment income the corporation can earn before it starts to erode the small business deduction, and the salary-or-dividend mix that sets your client's RRSP room.
Longer-term work, such as holding company structures, estate freezes and the tax side of an IPP or insurance strategy, we plan together. You keep the investment and insurance advice; I do not give it. Tax planning for professional corporations →
Corporate lawyers on reorganizations and share structures, realtors setting up a PREC, and bookkeepers whose clients have outgrown compliance-only work. The same approach applies: I take the tax piece, and the client stays yours. For real estate professionals →
How a referral works
An email copying your client works best. Your client can also book a call directly; ask them to mention your name.
Usually sooner. If there is a CRA or filing deadline, say so in the introduction and it moves to the front.
Twenty to thirty minutes with your client. Then a written scope, fee and timeline, keyed to the file's deadlines, before any work starts.
With your client's written consent, I copy you on the milestones that affect your side of the file: returns filed, assessments received, the clearance certificate issued.
If the file is not a fit, or your client does not need to pay anyone for it, I will tell both of you that plainly rather than take the engagement.
What you can count on
I do not give legal, investment, insurance or mortgage advice. When a question belongs to you, I send your client back to you.
Your client's information is protected under the CPA Ontario Code of Professional Conduct. I share it with you only with their consent, and I will ask for that consent at the start so you are not left out.
I do not pay or accept referral fees. Referrals go both ways on merit: when my clients need a lawyer, broker or advisor, I send them to people I trust.
Common questions
Yes, once your client has consented in writing. That consent is part of the engagement letter if you want it to be, so the lawyer, broker or advisor on the file can be kept in the loop from the start.
Usually, yes. Unfiled terminal returns, missed T3 deadlines, years of unfiled personal or corporate returns, and CRA letters that have been sitting in a drawer are common starting points. The first step is working out what is still recoverable and what the exposure is. Catching up on unfiled returns →
The request can only go in once all the returns are filed and assessed, and the CRA's processing time is outside anyone's control. What I can control is getting the returns filed and assessed quickly, and filing the request as soon as they are, so the timing does not come as a surprise to you or the beneficiaries.
Yes. I am fluent in Italian, which often helps on estate files where the executor or family is more comfortable discussing the details in Italian.
It depends on the file. Your client gets a written scope and fee before any work starts, so there is no open-ended hourly billing to explain later.
Book a short intro call, or send an introduction by email. I am glad to meet referral partners before there is a specific file.