You’re filing your personal tax return every spring, paying what you owe, maybe getting a small refund. And every year you wonder if you’re leaving money on the table. The honest answer for most Toronto professionals is yes, not because anything is being filed incorrectly, but because nobody is doing the planning that happens before April.
At Cassar CPA, personal tax planning is part of what we do year-round for Toronto professionals, families, and incorporated business owners. From our offices in downtown Toronto and Oakville, we help you reduce what you owe, time your contributions and withdrawals for the best outcome, and coordinate your personal tax position with everything else going on in your financial life.
Your personal tax position rarely sits in isolation, it ties into your business, your investments, your family situation, and your long-term goals. Our team brings the depth across all of those to give you a personal tax plan that actually fits your life.
Cassar CPA Professional Corporation
Cassar CPA Professional Corporation
Cassar CPA Professional Corporation
Cassar Business Services Inc.
Where you are in the process determines how we approach it. If the CRA has just contacted you about an audit, the work starts immediately. We review the audit letter, figure out what they’re looking at, organize your records, and respond so that your position is documented clearly from day one. We deal with the auditor directly.
If you’re a doctor, lawyer, consultant, or any other incorporated professional in Toronto, your personal tax plan has to work alongside your corporate plan. The choice between salary and dividends. How much to leave in the corporation versus pull out for personal use. When to use your RRSP versus your corporation as your retirement vehicle. We coordinate both sides.
Self-employment makes your T1 considerably more complex. You’re reporting income on Form T2125, claiming home office expenses, calculating CCA on your vehicle, paying both halves of CPP. Doing this without proper planning means either overpaying tax or under-claiming legitimate deductions, both of which hurt.
Once your income crosses into the higher Ontario brackets, the marginal rate becomes painful. The top combined federal-Ontario rate hits 53.53% on income over $253,414. Every dollar you can defer, split, or shelter at that level is worth real money.
Rental income reported on Form T776, capital gains on property sales, principal residence designation, change-of-use elections, there’s significant tax exposure tied to real estate, and the planning around it is often where the biggest savings live.
Tuition transfers, scholarship income, RESP withdrawals, Canada Workers Benefit eligibility, there’s coordination that pays off.
The 50% capital gains inclusion rate (after the proposed increase was cancelled in March 2025) still leaves significant tax to plan around. Timing the disposition of investments, harvesting losses, and using the Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption when selling shares of a qualifying small business corporation can save tens of thousands.
The 2026 RRSP contribution limit is $33,810 (or 18% of your prior-year earned income, whichever is less). But how much to contribute, and when, depends on your marginal tax rate this year versus what you expect in retirement. Sometimes contributing the maximum makes sense. Sometimes deferring the deduction to a higher-income year saves more. We model both scenarios.
The TFSA annual limit is $7,000 for 2026, bringing cumulative room to $109,000 for anyone eligible since 2009. If you’re a first-time home buyer, the FHSA lets you contribute $8,000 per year (up to $40,000 lifetime) with full deductibility and tax-free withdrawals for a qualifying purchase. The order in which you fund these accounts matters, and it’s not the same for everyone.
Spousal RRSPs let you shift retirement income to a lower-bracket spouse. Pension income splitting lets retirees split eligible pension income with a spouse. For incorporated professionals, the Tax on Split Income rules limit what’s possible, but legitimate income-splitting strategies still exist. We make sure you’re using what’s available without crossing into the rules that trigger TOSI.
The capital gains inclusion rate is 50%. That means half of any gain gets added to your taxable income. Timing matters. So does loss harvesting, using investment losses to offset gains in the same year, or carrying them back up to three years. For sales of qualifying small business shares, the Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption (estimated at approximately $1,275,000 for 2026, pending CRA confirmation) can shelter significant gains entirely.
Donating appreciated securities directly to a registered charity eliminates the capital gain entirely while still giving you the donation tax credit. Bundling donations into a single year (or using a donor-advised fund) can also produce a better credit than spreading them out.
Before December 31: make charitable donations, trigger capital losses to offset gains, contribute to your child’s RESP, pay deductible expenses. Before March 2: contribute to your RRSP for the previous tax year. These deadlines are non-negotiable.
By October or November for the current tax year. Some strategies need lead time, RRSP contributions, charitable donations of securities, capital gains harvesting, RESP funding. By March, when you’re sitting with your T-slips, most planning opportunities for the year you’re filing are already closed.
If your situation is straightforward, one T4, basic deductions, no investments, software might be enough. But once you have self-employment income, rental properties, capital gains, stock options, or you’re drawing income from a corporation, the planning side becomes worth more than the cost of doing the work yourself. The deductions and credits you don’t know about will cost you more than our fee.
Get caught up. The CRA’s Voluntary Disclosures Program, overhauled in October 2025, may allow you to file late returns with reduced penalties. The longer you wait, the harder it gets to access relief. We handle voluntary disclosures regularly and can walk you through what’s involved.
Yes. CRA personal tax audits and reassessments are part of what we do regularly. See our CRA Tax Dispute Resolution page for more on how that process works.
If your net tax owing is more than $3,000 (or $1,800 in Quebec) for the current and either of the two previous years, the CRA requires quarterly instalment payments due March 15, June 15, September 15, and December 15. Missing them triggers interest charges. We help clients structure their cash flow around the instalment schedule.
“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’ve been filing your T1 every spring without ever really thinking about whether you could be paying less tax, you’re not alone, but you’re also probably leaving money on the table. The fix isn’t complicated. It’s just planning.
Cassar CPA Professional Corporation works with small business owners, incorporated professionals, and entrepreneurs from our offices in Toronto (WaterPark Place, 20 Bay Street) and Oakville (132 Trafalgar Road). We serve clients throughout the Greater Toronto Area, including:
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
