Tips on Tipping Policies

If  your restaurant pools or shares tips, charges automatic gratuities, or receives a tip-out “to the house”, this article could save you thousands of dollars. If you’re like most restaurateurs, you probably think that the Canada Revenue Agency’s only concern about tips and gratuities is that servers report them on their personal income tax returns.  While the CRA is concerned about this, now, [...]

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U.S. Tax Audits Draw Anger

So, what do we care about U.S. tax audits?  Plenty.  What happens in the U.S. (and abroad) tends to happen in Canada, too. Recently, the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance hired 300 additional auditors in an effort to generate an additional $200 million of sales tax revenue.  While they say they’re just [...]

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Perfect Pour = Unreported Sales (and Taxes)?

Huh?  Do you mean that if I never over-pour drinks, my establishment can still be accused of under-reporting my sales (and taxes) during an audit?  That can’t be right!  Can it?  Unfortunately, it IS true for almost every restaurant and bar in Canada!  Today’s post explains how this happens and what you can do about it. Most [...]

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The Real Threat

Despite what has been published in the press and disclosed by the CRA and the Ministry of Revenue Quebec (MRQ), the use of zappers has not reached epidemic proportions in the restaurant industry.  Zappers have been around since the mid-1990s, though most of the usage seems to have been confined to Quebec.  In fact, the vast majority [...]

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Restaurant Tax Fraud – Then and Now

Recently, we’ve begun to hear a lot more about tax evasion in the restaurant industry.  More specifically, we’re talking about technologically-assisted tax fraud, using zappers or phantom-ware.  It made the news, again this past week, when it was disclosed that the Canada Revenue Agency had found more than $40M of unreported tax in the restaurant [...]

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