For those of you involved with Charitable or Not-For-Profit organizations in general, it is important that you are familiar with many of the compliance-related changes that are currently effective for these organizations. In this issue of my Weekly Top 5, I invite you to join us for a FREE webinar next week on all you need to know about leading/managing a Not-For-Profit organization. I also share other valuable tips and resources in this issue. Enjoy and please remember to share this with everyone in your network:

1. A FREE Webinar For Directors/Leaders/Managers of Not-For-Profit Organizations

We are excited to announce an upcoming FREE webinar for Directors, leaders, and those involved in Not-For-Profit organizations. This webinar will focus on financial governance and all related compliance obligations for Not-For-Profit organizations including charities. This webinar will take place online on Zoom on Wednesday, February 12, 2025 at 5 PM. Here are some questions this webinar will address:

• What are the key building blocks for maintaining strong financial governance for a Not-For-Profit organization?
• What are my responsibilities as a director or leader in a Not-For-Profit organization?
• How do I maintain compliance with the Canada Revenue Agency’s compliance requirements for Not-For-Profit organizations including Charities?
• What are the best practices for maintaining adequate books and records?
• What are the Provincial and Federal laws governing my Not-For-Profit organization and what are my obligations to ensure compliance?
• What are the benefits of audited financial statements for my organization and its board members?
• How do I get my organization to be audit-ready?

To learn more and to register to attend, go to gmscpa.ca/nfp. We look forward to hosting you next week on Wednesday.

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2. Do You Own A Corporation With A December 31 Year-end?

As some of you may know, we provide a number of services for corporate clients and it’s that time of the year when corporations with a December year-end should start organizing their documents to compile their financial results, estimate taxes, plan their cash flow for the new year and several other things. While we obviously help corporations with the tax compliance work of filing their annual corporate tax returns, we do provide other additional value-added services such as:

• Streamlining and automating the majority of your bookkeeping processes
• Doing a cash flow and budget analysis for your corporation
• Estimating corporate tax liability and developing a plan for installment payment of your taxes
• Corporate tax planning including how to invest corporate dollars and how to properly use insurance within your business to mitigate risk and plan for retirement
• Corporate restructuring to ensure you’re organized in the most tax-efficient way
• Remuneration planning to ensure you’re taking money out of your corporation in the most tax-efficient manner
• How to use your corporation as a nest egg for your retirement in a tax-efficient manner.
• And many more…

If you’re looking for solutions for your corporation consider working with me and my team at GMS Chartered Professional Accountants LLP. I invite you to book a complimentary time to chat with me here​

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3. Should You Contribute To Your RRSP Account?

It’s RRSP season and the deadline is coming up the end of this month! As you may already know, RRSP stands for “Registered Retirement Savings Plan” and it is a vehicle that allows you to defer taxes on your income. While it is the most widely used tax shelter in Canada, many still associate it with retirement even though it can be used for a variety of purposes, such as financing your first home or training or post-secondary education, or simply as a tool for tax deferral. With the crazy advertisements about the RRSP deadline all over the media, the question for you is…

Should you contribute to your RRSP?

It depends…

If you’re considering whether RRSP is the right tool for you, I suggest you consult with a professional who can help you plan around your RRSP. When used correctly with customized planning, it is a great tool for tax-efficient wealth accumulation. For this reason, I believe you should own one and contribute to it. Don’t just contribute to an RRSP account because everyone is doing so. Contribute because it fits well with your personal financial plan. I believe that no matter your income level, there is room in everyone’s plan to include RRSP as a tax-saving strategy. If you need help determining whether using RRSP is a great planning strategy for you, I suggest you book a FREE consultation with me so I can help you.

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4. Why Inspiration Is Unnecessary

If you’re like me, you will often wait for inspiration to start your new business, a new career, or a new adventure. To my shock, it appears that inspiration is not something we wait for, rather, it’s something that happens to us when we’re in motion. In other words, we get inspired when we swing into action. In his email this week, James Clear shares a quote on this from Chuck Close, a painter and visual artist:

"The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to do an awful lot of work.

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case."

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, shares insightful quotes like this weekly. Consider subscribing to his weekly emails for tips on cultivating winning habits. Check it out here.

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5. We are now GMS Chartered Professional Accountants LLP

After more than a decade of growth and evolution, we’re once again making a name change—rebranding from GMS Professional Corporation to GMS Chartered Professional Accountants Limited Liability Partnership. This isn’t just a name change; it’s the start of a new era for our firm and services. In 2012, we started our firm as Green, Meikle & Smith Chartered Accountants Professional Corporation. In 2017, we rebranded to GMS Professional Corporation and now we’re rebranding to GMS Chartered Professional Accountants Limited Liability Partnership. This new partnership structure will make it easier to expand our team and bring in new partners as we continue to grow the firm. Our focus will continue to remain on supporting small businesses and not-for-profit (NFP) organizations as it has always been from day one. Click here to get more details on why we’re making this change.