So you’ve used your corporation to build
wealth and to provide a nice, stable income. At the end of it all, we all go
the way we do and it’s time to consider the two inevitabilities in life: death
and taxes.
Upon the death of a shareholder, there is what
we call a ‘deemed disposition’ of shares. This means that on the date of death,
shareholders are considered to have sold their shares at whatever gain or loss
they would incur at that time. Those shares are passed down to a new
shareholder in accordance with a will or some corporate documents dictating who
becomes the new shareholder. But regardless of what happens after, that
shareholder has sold their shares on that date.
This can represent some problems. Let’s say
no planning was done and the accounting was sloppy. If the shares were worth,
say, $1,000,000 at the time of passing but had little to no cost base, that would
be a $1M capital gain adding $500,000 to the income line of a taxpayer’s final
tax return and a $208,000 best-case scenario tax bill.*
If the inheriting shareholder didn’t have
the means to pay the tax bill and there were no other estate assets, they may
have to take a dividend to pay the bill meaning they’d have to declare a
$310,000 dividend to pay the tax for the dividend as well as to pay the tax for
the estate - again, there are better ways to do this but it’s the least tax
efficient way to manage the tax bill.
One of the ways to manage the tax bill is
to own life insurance in the corporation yet again. There is a notional account
called a ‘Capital Dividend Account’ that certain corporate activities create -
one of which is a life insurance payout less the ACB of the policy. This
‘CDA’ allows for dividends to flow through to shareholders without attracting
taxation.
In our example above, if there was an
insurance policy in the corporation which is triggered on death which is also
when our deemed disposition occurs, there would be money made available to be
removed from the corporation with no taxation. This could be used to pay the tax bill and
provide tax-free money to remaining shareholders.
These past 3 blogs
have shown the corporation as a wonderful tool for both reducing taxes while
accumulating wealth, streamlining income for retirement purposes and then how
to reduce tax burdens on death. It’s good when we can have all the tools in
working condition!
*all personal tax calculations are
estimates based on taxtips.ca tax calculator.
If you have
questions about wealth building, contact Worby Wealth Management to get your
questions answered and start investing in an RRSP, TFSA or other investment
accounts today.