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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CRA Auditors Charged

I’m certainly not saying that all, or even a significant number, of CRA’s tax auditors are corrupt, but this story in the Montreal Gazette highlights some very interesting issues surrounding restaurant tax audits. The corrupt tax auditors seemed to focus on restaurants, knowing that they could “justify” large reassessments, unless the owners paid them bribes. [...]

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Qualities of a “Good” Restaurant Accountant

Here are the top five qualities of a “good” restaurant accountant: Understands your restaurant and uses this knowledge to offer strong advice for improving your operations and finances; Analyses sales, expenses and margins to identify problems and improve profitability; Provides sound tax advice to legitimately maximize your deductions and minimize your taxes; Ensures that you [...]

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Rampant Restaurant Fraud

The Canada Revenue Agency released some details of their 3-year pilot study (it was only supposed to run two years) of fraud in the restaurant industry.  While not many details were released, you can read the Globe and Mail article, Taxman finds rampant restaurant fraud. The media’s interpretation of the details that were released is [...]

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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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