Читать книгу Kickstart Your Corporation - Andrew Feindel - Страница 29

Once you have incorporated, it's probably time to rethink how you donate to charity. Whether we're talking about donations that are as small as $25 to support a colleague's charitable run or tithing 10% of your income to your church, it is important to know the basics on how to maximize the tax effectiveness of your donation.

If you donate personally, you receive a 15% federal credit (plus provincial credit; e.g., in Ontario 5%) on your first $200, then a 29% federal credit (plus provincial credit, e.g., in Ontario 11%) after that, and finally a 33% super credit for people in the top tax bracket. Given that donations can be carried forward for five years, if your donated amount is under $200, you might as well defer it to a future year and claim all the donations together so you can benefit from the larger credit. Between 2013 and 2017, if this was your first donation—called the first-time donor's super credit—you would receive an additional credit of 25% on the first $1,000 in donations. (The first-time donor's super credit expired at the end of 2017.)

If you donate corporately, you receive a tax deduction from your donation. This tax deduction reduces your taxes on your active income.

Usually with professionals, tax deductions are worth more than tax credits. The exception would be if you happen to have a very low personal tax rate, with the result that you can take funds out of your corporation at a lower rate than the credit you are receiving from your donation credit. (Keep in mind, however, that we have to eventually make up every dollar we spend personally by pulling more money from the corporation.)

But beyond deductions versus credits, there are other ways to increase the tax efficiency of your donated dollars. What many Canadians don't realize is that as of May 2006, donations to registered charities of publicly listed securities are exempt from capital gains taxation on gains triggered as a result of the gift, making it more tax-efficient for donors to give securities directly to charity, rather than to sell them and give the proceeds to the charity.⁷

Let's look at an example of how this works: I work with a client who tithes to his local church, giving 10% of his income ($60,000 per year) to his church. To help him accomplish this goal, we set up a charitable account for him at no cost (note, many banks and financial institutions charge thousands for this setup/transaction).

When the time comes for his donation, I take the best-performing asset from the previous year and roll that over to the church. In the last transaction we did, it was an investment with a book value of $20,000 and a market value of $60,000. The church receives the same $60,000 they were to receive anyway, and they can sell the asset right away or hold on to it. The client, in turn, receives a $60,000 tax deduction, but this also saves him upwards of $10,000 in corporate taxes. Plus, the client can now withdraw $40,000 from his corporation tax-free through the capital dividend account (CDA). Since 0% of the gain is taxable, 100% of the gain is added to the CDA (see sections 83(2) and 38(a.1)(i) of the Income Tax Act).

Think about all the times you have donated, or will donate in the future, to see how much money is left on the table if you are not employing this specific strategy. You could even use those tax savings to donate to your second-favorite charity!