Restaurant Audit Assumptions

When the auditor arrives to audit your bar or restaurant, he or she will review your internal controls to ensure the accuracy and completeness of your recorded sales and the taxes thereon.  If the documentation is not available to determine that appropriate controls were effective throughout the audit period, the auditor will conclude that the [...]

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Now is the Time to Protect Your Restaurant from a Sales Tax Audit

If you have been following the posts on this site (and several others on the internet), you know that your restaurant or bar business faces a serious risk when it is audited by CRA or the provincial auditors.  In most cases, your licenced business will be audited, it is just a matter of when. As [...]

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How Much is Too Much?

This post concerns customer comps or promotional drinks served by restaurants and bars.  The issue is:  how much is too much? Most restaurants and bars offer promotional drinks to their customers from time to time.  Sometimes it is to acknowledge frequent visits, high spending or special occasions.  Other times it may be to “compensate” a customer for [...]

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5,000 Tax Auditors on the Prowl

In a National Post article last December, CRA warns business owners on Tax Cheating Software, it disclosed that the CRA has dedicated 5,000 employees to the task of finding unreported income and ensuring that sales taxes are remitted properly, “even when sales records are missing.”  This is a thinly disguised warning to restaurants (and other cash businesses) that [...]

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Revenu Quebec Targets Restaurants

According to the Revenu Quebec website, there were approximately 17,600 restaurants selling $9.5 billion of food and alcoholic beverages in 2007.  As in most other provinces, the restaurant industry is a significant and vital sector of the economy.  While the industry may not be particularly profitable, it does play a significant role in the collection [...]

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