One rental property is a side income. A portfolio is a business, with structuring decisions, tax that compounds, and an exit that can cost you dearly if nobody planned for it.
We work with real estate investors and portfolio landlords across Ontario from our Toronto and Oakville offices, on the questions that decide how much of your return you actually keep: how to hold the properties, how to handle the tax each year, and how to sell without an avoidable bill at the end.
Cassar CPA Professional Corporation
Cassar CPA Professional Corporation
Cassar CPA Professional Corporation
Cassar Business Services Inc.
Here are a few reasons portfolio landlords across Ontario work with us:
Own the properties personally, in a corporation, or through a holding company? It’s the first question, and the wrong answer is expensive. Rental income inside a corporation is usually treated as passive, which changes how it’s taxed and can affect the small business rate on any other business you own. We look at your whole picture, your portfolio, your income, your other companies, and set up ownership so it works for the long haul, not just this year.
Two of the most common ways landlords lose money to CRA: claiming depreciation without understanding it comes back to bite you on sale, and calling a capital improvement a “repair.” We handle both correctly. Depreciation is a timing decision, not a free deduction, and we make it deliberately, based on how long you’ll hold and where your tax rate is headed.
The biggest tax bill on a rental property comes when you sell it, and by then most of the planning window has closed. We look ahead: how gains and recaptured depreciation will land, whether a property was ever your home, and how to time and structure a sale so the result isn’t a surprise. For a growing portfolio, the exit is part of the plan from the start.
Plenty of accountants can file a rental schedule. Far fewer will tell you, before you buy the next property, whether it should go in your name or a company’s, and what that choice does to your tax a decade from now. Our founder, Matt Cassar, has spent fifteen years helping investors and business owners structure what they build so it holds up over time. We believe the money you keep on a real estate portfolio is made in the structure and the exit, not just the annual return. That’s the work we do with you.
Here’s what working with us looks like:
We start with how you hold your properties and whether it still fits. Personal, corporate, partnership, or a holding company, each has different tax and liability consequences, and the right answer depends on the size of your portfolio, your other income, and where you’re headed. You get a clear recommendation, not a shrug.
Rental statements, deductible expenses done properly, the capital-versus-repair calls that trip people up, mortgage interest, and the depreciation decision made on purpose each year. We keep the reporting clean and the deductions defensible, so a CRA review is a non-event.
As you add properties, the numbers get more complex and lenders want cleaner records. We keep your financials in shape for financing, help you understand the after-tax cost of the next purchase, and make sure growth doesn’t quietly create a tax problem in another part of your life.
When you sell, one property or the whole portfolio, we plan it ahead of time: capital gains, recaptured depreciation, timing across tax years, and whatever structuring can legitimately reduce the hit. Done early, an exit plan protects a meaningful share of what you’ve built.
“Their diligent approach and personal care have saved me thousands of dollars in taxes over the years!”
"You simply won’t get this quality of service from a big firm.”
“I’ve been working with Matt for a while now and I recommend him as much as I can to my friends and family”
“Cassar CPA has saved me a lot of time, money, and headache!”
“We love Matt and his team! We use them for our NFP organization and they’re always fast, flexible, and knowledgeable”
“Fantastic and knowledgeable team with very forward thinking practices.”
"Matt and his team provide clients efficient and speedy turnaround on monthly accounting and year-end services, while at the same time acting as an advisor on various finance matters.”
If you own rental property as an investment and want the structure, the annual tax, and the eventual sale handled by people who plan ahead, that’s what we do. With offices in Toronto and Oakville, we work with real estate investors and portfolio landlords across Ontario. Let’s set up a discovery meeting to review your holdings and where we can help you keep more.
It depends on your portfolio and the rest of your financial life, and it’s worth getting right because the choice is hard to undo cheaply. Holding personally is simpler and the gains are taxed at your personal rate. A corporation can offer liability separation and estate-planning flexibility, but rental income inside a corporation is usually treated as passive, which is taxed differently and doesn’t get the small business rate, and if that corporation is tied to another business you own, it can even reduce the lower tax rate on that business. There’s no universal answer. We look at your specific situation and tell you what actually fits.
Not automatically. Capital Cost Allowance lets you deduct part of the building’s cost each year, which lowers your tax now, but every dollar you claim is added back to your income when you sell, taxed at your full rate. So it’s really a timing decision: it works in your favour if your tax rate will be lower when you sell than it is today, and against you if the reverse is true. We make that call deliberately with you each year rather than claiming it by default.
Two things happen at once. You have a capital gain on the increase in value above your cost, of which half is taxable, and you may have recaptured depreciation, any CCA you claimed over the years gets added back as fully taxable income. The land-versus-building split, your records of improvements, and whether the property was ever your principal residence all change the outcome. This is exactly the kind of thing that’s expensive to get wrong and very manageable when planned ahead, which is why we’d rather talk before you list, not after.
A repair keeps the property in its current condition and is deductible this year. An improvement betters it or extends its life, and it gets added to the property’s cost base instead of being written off immediately. Getting this line wrong, deducting something that should have been capitalized, is one of the most common triggers for a CRA reassessment on rental properties. When it’s a genuine judgment call, capitalizing is usually the safer path. We make these calls for you and keep the backup so they hold up.
Cassar CPA Professional Corporation works with real estate investors and portfolio landlords across Ontario from our offices in Toronto (WaterPark Place, 20 Bay Street) and Oakville (132 Trafalgar Road).
Toronto · Oakville · Mississauga · Brampton · Vaughan · Markham · Richmond Hill · Etobicoke · Burlington · Milton · Halton Hills · Other GTA & Halton Region Communities
Toronto Office
WaterPark Place 20 Bay Street, 11th Floor
Toronto, ON M5J 2N8
