Canadians - Tax Advice Please

I know there is another tax post going, but its outta control since ppl from all over the world are weighing in.

I have a few questions:

I have been earning income off internet marketing/affilliate/adsense since January 2006. I have not registered with Revenue Canada, and all payments are made to me personally.

The question is this: If i go in and register Monday, can I still claim EXPENSES that were incurred prior to registering?

If no,

Can I as a person, sell the assets to the business once registered, and then claim it?

I would not be registering as a corp, but as a sole proprietorship.

 

If you're doing business under your own name, you can run a sole proprietorship without having to register it. So you can claim your expenses from the point you started doing business.

If you want to run a sole proprietorship but under another name (like your website's name for ex), then you have to register it. Still in that case though, with a sole proprietorship, you declare your business income on your personal income tax, hence you can still claim your expenses.

I guess the issue would be if you were incorporating, since then, it would become two different entities.

You should definitely check the Canada Revenue website, all the information you need is there: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/menu-e.html

 

Yes, one way or another you can claim your expenses. Running it yourself, you make income, you claim expenses. Registered, you make income, you claim expenses.

I think you may be thinking that incorporating=registering. And they are not equal. I'm no accountant (by any stretch of the imagination) but I don't think that registering will change anything other than you may have to collect and remit gst. When I ran a sole proprietorship I still just submitted my regular income tax forms with a few extra pages. When you incorporate, you create a completely seperate entity that has to file it's own tax return seperate from your personal returns. The only reason I actually registered IIRC was so I could get a bank account in the name of the business, and because I had to charge gst.

Whatever the technicalities are, as long as you are militant in keeping your business stuff seperate (you must have a seperate account! - and balance it, run expenses and all income through it, etc) from your personal stuff, an accountant can easily figure it out. If you comingle funds between business and personal things will get ugly.

You might also post your question to www.redflagdeals.net. the canadian business section has some folks that seem to know canadian accounting.