The Wealth Building Toolkit: Corporations 

There are many tools that are useful to build wealth. Virtually everyone has access to account types such as RRSPs and TFSAs. These are accounts which have special tax treatments such that we can reduce our overall taxation while we are alive and accumulating wealth. Pensions and group RRSPs are also useful and often an employer will give additional funds to these plans which is of obvious benefit.

For those of us who are not employees though, we may be able to use another tool - the corporation. If someone is self-employed and legally able to have their corporation take their income, this can be very helpful.

The key to using a corporation efficiently is that the earnings a taxpayer has is not all required. Active income for a small business conducted in Saskatchewan is taxed at a low rate of 11%. If a person’s income level is high enough that they don’t require all of it, leaving income behind in a corporation to invest may be much more efficient than taking it all as income and then investing.

Let’s look at an example:

John needs $95,000/year after tax for lifestyle but earns $250,000/yr gross. If he took all this money, paid tax and then invested the remainder, he’d have approximately $66,760* to invest at the end of the year.

If he were able to and chose to use a corporation, however, he’d take $130,000 gross income from the corp and pays approximately $35,000 in tax leaving $120,000 behind. 11% tax for taxes leaves him with $106,800 for investing.

The difference of using a corporation in this example leaves him with an additional $39,920 or 60% more money to invest to build his wealth.

Clearly, corporations are a fantastic tool for building wealth. The next blog is going to look at strategies to get this money out of the corporation on a tax-advantaged basis.

*all personal tax calculations are estimates based on taxtips.ca tax calculator.