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E-Myth – “Why most small businesses don’t work & what to do about it”

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Edmonton Bookkeeping | Using Shareholder Loans To Pay Salary


When taking money out of their corporation, business owners need to know how to do it properly, and in a way that won’t trigger more significant tax payments says Edmonton bookkeeping. Business owners need to keep track of all of the money that they take note of their business, and by not doing so can run into significant problems later on in their business. Business owners need to be disciplined, and take many of their business properly. They should not be paying themselves paycheck, but instead be taking dividends for salary of their corporation. Learning how to do that properly, business owners can take the money of their business in order to live, while avoiding the significant personal tax issues they may face otherwise.

Every time the business owner takes many of their corporation, this adds money into the shareholders loan account. This is all of the money they owe back to the corporation, and it is kept as a of running total going back to the beginning of the corporation. However, every time a business owner pays a business expense through personal money, the corporation and supporting them money back. Both of these amounts are kept as running totals in the business until the business owner clears them. If the business owner puts more money into their corporation then they take out, and the corporation was the money. However, if the business owner takes more money out then they put in, that’s money they owe back to the corporation unless they clear that money says Edmonton bookkeeping.

How business owner would go about clearing their shareholder loan, is by declaring all of the money that they have taken out of the corporation as personal taxes. Once they declare how much money they have taken of the corporation and pay personal taxes on it, Edmonton bookkeeping says that resets the shareholders loan balance back to zero. It’s extremely important that an extremely good record is being kept of all of the money that business owners are taking of their business.

Great way that business owners can keep track of this, is by setting up a bank account with the sole purpose of the bank account will be for the business owner to take their salary and personal dividend draws out of their corporation. What this does is limit the number of transactions that are being done in this bank account, which can help business owners and their comes in a number of ways. The first way says Edmonton bookkeeping is that it is easy to see all of the various transactions in the account, so a business owner can see exactly how much money they are taking part of the corporation on a regular basis. Since there should only be one or two draws every single month, it can be extremely easy to track. This also very helpful in figuring out if they have been any errors, since there are so few transactions in the account, errors will stick out very easily and will help accountants figure out what happened.

Average Canadians pay 43% of their income in taxes says Edmonton bookkeeping. And only 37% of the remaining income goes towards their basic necessities. Business owners who are not sure how their shareholder loan account works, or don’t think it’s important, and that being much higher personal tax, or even get hit with personal tax assessments due to not utilizing this correctly. Business owners should understand how to take money out of their business, not only to maximize their personal tax savings, but also to avoid paying tax penalties later on down the road.

Taking many of the corporation should be done correctly, not by giving themselves paycheck says Edmonton bookkeeping, but by trying dividends out of their corporation. The business owners need to understand that every time they draw money of their corporation, this adds to show the loan account, which keeps a running total of all of the money the business owner has taken out of their business. The reason this account keeps track of all of the money that a business owner takes out, is because that is money that a business owner owes back into their corporation. However, business owners who are drawing a salary aren’t planning on paying that back, because that’s the money they’re using to live on. So they need to declare all of the money that they have taken out of their business in order to pay personal taxes on. All business owners who take dividends or salary out of their corporation must pay personal taxes on that amount in this way.

It’s extremely important that this is done in the appropriate time frame says Edmonton bookkeeping. Entrepreneurs have up to two years to declare personal taxes if they owed to the company. Since they are not allowed to owe their company for longer than two consecutive years, it’s important that they clear this balance before the end of the second year. Failure to do so, we can trigger CRA to automatically assess personal text to the entrepreneur at any given time and without warning. Depending how much time has passed since the last time the claim to personal taxes, this could be a significant amount of money.

Business owners should use this information and knowledge of shareholders loans to plan in advance with their accountant how they’re going to take money out of their business in order to effectively tax plan. By planning how they’re going to take money out of the business, can help them avoid paying the significant amounts of taxes. This is something that a business owner should be able to talk about with their accountant says Edmonton bookkeeping.

This way, entrepreneurs can understand how to take money out of their corporation properly as well as pay taxes accordingly, and avoid paying penalties. It’s not difficult to do, and when they do it, can make a huge difference to their business. We wish you and your business all of the luck in the world.