Our Services, and How to Work Out Which One You Need

What does Bestax cover?

Five areas: bookkeeping and accounting systems, GST/HST and payroll compliance, personal and corporate tax, business registration across the provinces, and specialist advisory covering trusts, transfer pricing and non-resident tax. Twenty-two services in all, run from the Mississauga office.

The range is wider than most local firms advertise. Plenty of practices stop at bookkeeping, T1s and T2s. That covers the majority of businesses, and if that is all you need, you have plenty of choice.

The difference shows up at the edges. A corporation with a US parent needs transfer pricing documentation. An estate needs trust accounting. A family holding assets across borders needs both. Those are the jobs that usually get referred out, and referrals cost you time.

What is the difference between bookkeeping, accounting and tax filing?

Bookkeeping records what happened. Accounting turns those records into statements you can read and act on. Tax filing reports the result to the CRA. They run in that order, and skipping the first one breaks the other two.

These three get used as though they mean the same thing, and the confusion costs people money. An owner who says “my accountant does my books” often means a bookkeeper enters transactions and someone else files once a year. Those are different jobs with different price tags.

Bookkeeping is the daily layer. Sales, purchases, receipts, bank and credit card reconciliation. It is unglamorous and it is the foundation. Most reporting problems trace back to this layer being neglected, not to anything clever going wrong further up.

Accounting sits on top. It takes clean records and produces a profit and loss statement, a balance sheet and a cash flow summary. That is where a business finds out whether a good month was actually profitable. Our monthly and quarterly financial reporting lives here, and a bank reconciliation guide is worth reading before you judge your own numbers.

Tax filing is the reporting obligation at the end. Personal returns, corporate returns, sales tax returns, payroll slips. It is the most visible part and the least flexible, because the deadlines are not yours to set.

Where firms differ is how much of the first layer they will touch. Some only want the year-end file. If your records are messy, that arrangement gets expensive fast, because someone bills you to untangle a year of entries in one go.

Which service do you need right now?

Start from the problem, not the service name. Behind on records means backlog accounting. A CRA letter means audit support. Hiring staff means payroll. Expanding provinces means registration. Most first calls fall into one of these.

Service menus are written by accountants, which is why they rarely match how a problem actually arrives. Nobody wakes up needing “backlog reconciliation.” They wake up because a lender asked for something.

Match your situation to the starting point below, then read that page rather than the whole list.

1. Your books are behind, or nobody has touched them this year

   Backlog accounting is the entry point. Transactions get cleaned up, accounts reconciled and records brought current before anything is filed. Everything else waits until the numbers are trustworthy.

2. You have crossed the sales tax threshold

   GST or HST registration comes first, then return filing on a schedule. Input tax credits are where most owners leave money behind, usually by not claiming what they are entitled to.

3. You have hired your first employee

   Payroll brings source deductions, remittances and year-end slips with it. This is the area where mistakes are most visible, because staff notice immediately.

4. A letter has arrived from the CRA

   Our tax team handles the correspondence, and the sooner records are in order the shorter the process tends to be. Turning up with a clean file changes the tone of the whole thing.

5. You are incorporating, or moving into another province

   Registration handles the filings. Whether you incorporate federally or provincially changes what you file later, so it is worth settling before the paperwork goes in.

6. Money or ownership crosses a border

   Cross-border tax, foreign tax credits, non-resident filing and transfer pricing all sit here. Related-party transactions in particular need documentation kept as you go, not reconstructed afterwards.

Does where you register change what you have to file?

Yes. Incorporating federally or provincially changes your ongoing filings, and each province runs its own registry. Quebec also administers its own sales tax alongside GST, which adds a second return most owners do not expect.

This is the decision people rush, usually because incorporation feels like paperwork standing between them and starting. It is worth an hour of thought, because reversing it later is more work than getting it right.

Federal incorporation gives you name protection across the country and the option to operate in any province, with extra-provincial registration where you have a real presence. Provincial incorporation is simpler if you plan to trade in one place. Our guide on federal versus provincial incorporation lays the trade-offs out properly.

Ontario runs its own registry, and a Master Business Licence is what a sole proprietor or partnership registers there. Alberta and Quebec each have their own process, and we handle registration in all three.

Quebec is the one that surprises people. It administers QST in addition to federal GST, so a business selling there can end up filing two sales tax returns rather than one. Our Quebec sales tax guide covers how the two interact.

None of this changes the accounting work much. It changes the filing calendar, and the filing calendar is what generates penalties.

What happens after you get in touch?

Four stages: a consultation to understand your business, bookkeeping and record management to get the numbers reliable, tax planning through the year rather than at filing time, and ongoing advisory once things are steady. Most clients clear the first two within two weeks.

Nothing here is unusual. It is worth setting out anyway, because the first two weeks with a new accountant are where most of the friction lives, and knowing the order helps.

1. Consultation and assessment

   A review of your current records and reporting, where compliance gaps sit, what your obligations are, and what you are trying to build. This is also where you find out whether the fit is right.

2. Bookkeeping and financial management

   Income and expense tracking, invoice and receipt management, bank and credit reconciliation. QuickBooks, Xero, Zoho and Sage are all in regular use, so you are not forced onto one platform.

3. Tax planning across the year

   A strategy that reduces liabilities, deductions and credits identified as they arise, and returns prepared accurately. Planning in February beats planning in June.

4. Reporting and ongoing advisory

   Monthly and quarterly reporting so decisions rest on current numbers, plus advice as the business changes shape. This is the part that compounds.

Who are these services actually for?

Owner-managed businesses across Canada, incorporated companies filing in more than one province, non-residents with Canadian income, and families holding assets in trust. The common thread is having obligations that outgrew a spreadsheet. Size matters less than complexity here.

The firm runs offices in Canada and the UAE, which matters mainly to people moving money or operations between the two. For everyone else it is a footnote.

• Sole proprietors and freelancers who have crossed into GST/HST territory and need filing handled properly
• Incorporated small businesses needing a T2, financial statements and a bookkeeper who stays on top of it
• Growing companies hiring staff and taking on payroll obligations for the first time
• Businesses registered in one province and expanding into Ontario, Alberta or Quebec
• Non-residents earning Canadian income, and Canadians with income earned abroad
• Corporate groups with related-party transactions that need transfer pricing documentation
• Executors and families managing estate or trust obligations

What should you have ready before asking for a quote?

Your business structure, roughly how many transactions a month you run, whether you are registered for GST/HST, whether you have payroll, and how current your records are. That is enough for a realistic answer. Approximate figures are fine at this stage.

Quotes get vague when the information is vague. An accountant pricing a clean-up job blind will either pad the number or under-quote and revisit it later, and neither is much fun.

• How your business is set up: sole proprietor, partnership or corporation, and which province it is registered in
• Your fiscal year end, if you are incorporated
• Roughly how many transactions run through the business each month
• Whether you are registered for GST or HST, and how often you file
• Whether you run payroll, and for how many people
• How far behind the records are, honestly, because it changes the scope more than anything else
• Any CRA correspondence you have received, including anything you have not opened yet