Small Business Week is here: make sure you check out the Canada Revenue Agency’s information and resources that are tailored to the needs of entrepreneurs
CRA SOURCE ARTICLE
This Small Business Week, October 15 to 21, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is celebrating the passion and impact of Canada’s entrepreneurs, cornerstones of our neighbourhoods and communities. As you take this time to connect, learn and grow your business smarts, we are excited to share some tax information and resources that can help your business thrive. In the midst of challenges such as weather events, supply chain issues and worker shortages, we’re here to help make managing your business taxes as quick and easy as possible.
Free Liaison Officer service
The CRA offers a free Liaison Officer service to owners of small businesses and self-employed individuals to help them understand their income tax, GST/HST and payroll obligations. A free in-person or virtual visit with a liaison officer is 100% confidential. The information you choose to discuss with a liaison officer will not be shared with other areas of the CRA, or anyone else. These personalized sessions exist to provide support, guidance, and help ease the stress of filing.
Read about Zouhair, a CRA liaison officer since 2017, who believes empathy is the key to helping businesses with their tax affairs.
The CRA’s digital services for businesses
Our digital services make handling your business tax matters faster and easier. Read about Julie for an example of how teams like hers are digitizing processes to better serve businesses.
The CRA’s digital services make it possible for you and your authorized employees and representatives to file, pay and access detailed information about your tax accounts. The CRA’s most used digital services for businesses include: My Business Account, Represent a Client, Email Notifications and Make a Payment.
Calculators
Small businesses want to get a sense of their tax obligations quickly and easily. Read about Lisa, who has designed online calculators so businesses can get a sense of their responsibilities without delay. This story is an example of how CRA employees develop innovative solutions to respond to emerging and unexpected business needs.
The CRA offers the Payroll Deduction Online Calculator to simplify the process of calculating the federal and provincial remittances, Canada Pension Plan contributions, and Employment Insurance premiums to be deducted from employee wages.
The CRA also offers a Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax Calculator, which determines the correct amount to be charged or claimed on sales and purchases, allowing you to make sure your business is collecting and remitting the appropriate amount of GST/HST.
Scientific Research and Experimental Development
The Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) program is a tax incentive designed to support research and development (R&D) activities conducted by businesses. We offer free services to help businesses conducting R&D work in Canada understand how to prepare an SR&ED claim.
Doing research on Mars? Working with NFTs and cryptocurrency? No problem. Read about how Michael helps businesses of all kinds and directs them to programs like SR&ED when he can.
New: Legislative changes that affect business taxes
Read about how Martine helps businesses file their taxes correctly and teaches them about benefits and credits that they may not know they’re eligible for. Employees like Martine help businesses feel more confident by educating them about recent changes that affect business taxes, such as the changes to mandatory electronic filing thresholds, the reporting requirements related to the Canadian Dental Benefit, the Province of Employment policy and Changes to the Canada Pension Plan.
For more information
For more information on the CRA’s business services, check out this recent tax tip from Charlie the chatbot, who you can find on the Canada.ca/CRA webpage answering questions about your business and other tax-related matters. For the months of April to July 2023, Charlie was asked over 854,000 questions in English and a little over 156,000 questions in French.
And visit Canada.ca: We’re improving the information on our web pages to make it easier for Canadians to find what they need online. For example, the CRA gets thousands of questions each year from businesses as they go through different changes. Our Changes to your business and Canada Revenue Agency program accounts page will give you information on what the CRA needs in many common situations, such as administrative changes, growing your business, and changes to business operations.
Read about how Jennifer embraces her passion for teaching and helps improve service to businesses from both within and outside the CRA.