Tax season for farms vary, depending on when the operation was incorporated. Some farms have their year-end in November and others in January for example.
There are several firms that offer tax services for producers, including FBC. FBC is a national firm with locations in B.C. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Atlantic Canada, with FBC’s two Saskatchewan locations in Regina and Saskatoon. They serve over 20 thousand businesses and farms nation-wide according to its website.
Starting out as a firm offering tax return and tax planning services to farmers and farming communities over 70 years ago, they’ve since grown and expanded to offer more services such as tax, book-keeping, payroll, financial and estate planning. CEO of FBC Yves Millette believes what makes them unique is a focus on the future. Using a rear-view mirror on a car as an analogy, Millette said tax preparation is about “four per cent of a viewable area in an automobile and it’s really about the past.”
“In this day and age of increasingly more complex taxes, increasingly less affordable options, less disposable income, what we focus on really is the future – the other 96 per cent, so that includes tax planning and tax optimization but it also includes things like estate planning, transition planning, specialized services such as health spending accounts, life insurance, all of the things you need to ensure that you’re planning for the future and you’re planning for basically a future that is on your terms and that’s where we believe we’re different.” he said.
A big concern among the agriculture community was proposed changes to the Capital Gains Tax last year. It included an increase to the inclusion rate of two-thirds on capital gains “realized annually above $250,000 by individuals and on all capital gains realized by corporations and most types of trusts” according to the Department of Finance. The initial effective date was June 25, 2024, but last month the federal government announced it would defer the changes to January 1, 2026.
Millette says when the initial announcement came, their advice to members was to prepare “based on the fact it will indeed eventually pass” and the Canada Revenue Agency was going to treat the proposed rules as though they were law, despite it not being passed in Parliament. With the subsequent deferral announcement, however, FBC’s advice changed to preparing with the current rules in place.
“Anyone’s that submitted a tax return, because corporations have different year ends that don’t necessarily align with personal tax deadlines, they’ll have to go through the normal assessment and refund process.” Millette added.
More information about what FBC offers can be found at fbc.ca.
You can hear the full interview with Yves Millete below.