The Main Dish = Small Business
Today I went to get my taxes done. A really nice guy named Steve, who has a small business out of his home on Flora, called PRD Tax Services, helped me out for the second year in a row. Thank you Caroline for referring me to him. I definitely recommend him to anyone else looking for some help in the tax department. Anyway, in an attempt to declare all my income, I brought in the receipts I had for the freelance translation I've been doing. The result? I am now my own small business.
The down side? More income to declare could potentially result in more taxes to pay. Also, instead of having to pay $40 to get my taxes done, I had to pay $60. The up side? Well, I was able to write off my Internet bill for the last few months as a business expense. Also, I found out that if I keep the receipts, I can write off other purchases, such as new computer software, print cartridges, etc. If I do enough work, I can even count part of my apartment as my business locale and write off part of my rent! Intriguing! And, as long as I don't make over $30,000 (which I don't think is anything to worry about), I don't have to do anything crazy like get a GST number and charge people taxes.
Really, the whole concept of income tax puzzles me, but at least things are straightened out for this year. I don't have to pay anything and even have a cheque coming my way. Last year, when the tax man told me how much money I was getting back, I could not restrain myself from saying "Yay! Free Money!" This resulted in me getting a lecture about how it is just the government giving me part of my own money back.
I restrained myself this year and settled for a mere "whoo hoo!", although he still commented that every time he mentioned the amount I came back with "whoo hoo!" and how it was his turn to "whoo hoo" when I paid him. I think he thinks I'm a bit strange. Oh well, join the club I suppose. ;o)
It's not even that I am getting that huge of a cheque, it will just be nice to have some extra money that was not necessarily expected. All in all, I think things went rather well. Let's just hope I don't run into any problems like last year! Knock on wood, fingers crossed, etc.
posted by Dish @ 9:31 PM
6 Comments:
I'm surprised and dismayed that a person who likes free money would pay $40 when their friends (aka me) would do it for free.
Something to know for next year!
As for your freelancing...awesome! Having a GST Number is cool though because you have to come up with a business name. Mine was Ryan Palmer Inc.
Having to pay taxes sucks.
Mine is Ferda Ozdemir Consulting
Yes, but Ryan, are you qualified to do taxes for small businesses? :o)
Anyone is qualified to do taxes. Even for small businesses.
I'm going to use my own business as an example, because I'm pretty sure yours was similar to mine (as in, not much going on).
Download the user guide for small businesses and voila! It tells you where to slot everything. Like your computer? Boom - there's a line to put it into. Ink cartridges? That too. I can't remember off of the top of my head, but it was something like OFFICE SUPPLIES.
There's a separate sheet for all that stuff which eventually calculates...something like your income or tax payable or something like that (let's be honest...I haven't seen this since 2002) and voila, it's done!
Now, before I get ahead of myself, you are entirely correct in getting it done professionally the first year. I also did that.
But after she showed me what she had to do, she told me that it wasn't really that hard - just add up a few more receipts and plug them into the form. If I had a business the next year, I would definitely do them myself.
I encourage you to take a look at how the taxes were done this year so you know for next year!
I should put more truth into that statement above..
Anyone is qualified to do taxes...but you would be a fool if you owned a large company and tried to do your own taxes. Hire an accountant!
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