Bob Gauvreau (YouTube, Nov 30, 2023) explains business tax filing obligations and common deadlines for different business types and jurisdictions. Key points: Canadian corporations can choose fiscal year-end (commonly Dec 31); corporations generally must pay tax balances within 90 days of year-end but have six months to file returns. Sole proprietors in Canada must pay taxes by April 30 and may file by June 15; in the US taxes are due April 15 with filing extensions to October 15 (payment still due April 15). Payroll source deductions are remitted regularly (commonly by the 15th monthly, but frequency increases with more employees to biweekly or weekly). Sales tax/HST filing frequency varies (often quarterly for small businesses, moving to monthly as businesses grow) and depends on province/state and product/service.
Questions this video answers
90 days after the corporation's fiscal year end.
Six months after the corporation's fiscal year end.
April 30 (payment due); filing is allowed until June 15.
Taxes are due April 15; filing can be extended to October 15, but payment is still due April 15.
Commonly due the 15th of each month; frequency increases (biweekly or weekly) as employee count grows.
Chapters
One of the best ways to make sure we're minimizing tax all across the board is to be familiar with what our tax filing obligations are. So there's quite a few. Right. If you're a corporation and you're a business, you've got a separate legal filing and you have a year end date. Typically we get December 31st, but if you're Canadian business, you can actually opt into any month end of the year, which is amazing. So you have flexibility on when you get to choose your year end date, when you choose your year end date. As a corporation, we essentially have 90 days to pay that balance. 90 days to pay the balance, but six months to file the tax return. I know it's not intuitive, it doesn't make sense, but this is why the government enforces us to pay installments along the way. They want you to be paid up by 90 days after your fiscal year end date, even though our filing requirements aren't until six months after. If you are a sole proprietorship, especially in Canada, you're focused on an April 30 payment deadline. If you owe taxes, your money is due to them. April 30th, they give you until June 15th to file your taxes, but if you owe the Money, it's due April 30th. In the US it's actually April 15th. So same thing, you can file an extension in the US you can file all the way up till October 15, but your taxes are due April 15. You have to make sure that they're paid up. When you have a business and you have payroll taxes, those payroll taxes are likely due the 15th of every month. If you've only got one employee, it might be quarterly. If you've got a lot of employees like me, it ends up being biweekly, where you have to make your payroll source deduction, remittance payments. It could even move to weekly. So the more employees you have, the more that frequency comes into play. At the same time, we've also got sales tax obligations. If you're in Ontario or you're subject to an HST sort of sales tax filing, it's likely quarterly. Some people have annually, which I wouldn't recommend, partially because it's such a large payment when you're collecting HST for the entire year. But as your business grows, your frequency is going to be increased involuntarily with the government anyway. And again, as you get your business growing a little bit more, the frequency actually will go up to monthly as well. So you've got a monthly filing obligation with any sort of HST or sales tax in Ontario or across Canada in the United States. It depends on your state. It depends on the product or service that you're offering, whether or not sales tax is applicable. Too many rules there. But we need to understand, based on what we're, what business we're in, what what state we're in, what that filing obligation looks like as well. So that is essentially a synopsis of a lot of the sales or the tax filing obligations that you have as a business. If you're not familiar with these, the penalties and interest for not filing these on time is way more expensive than having professionals take care of it for you. So make sure you're aware of your obligations and you have a team surrounding you that can take care of you and maximize your deductions and save you tax and avoid any penalties or late filing obligations.
