On December 6, 2017, Toronto City Council voted to establish a new property tax class for "Creative Co-Location Facilities". This is intended to provide some arts facilities (e.g. 401 Richmond, Artscape) in Toronto significant relief against property taxes pegged to market values, and to ensure that creative hubs are able to maintain their activity in vibrant and developing neighbourhoods. The new property tax class is in effect as of the 2018 taxation year.
By the end of 2018 charities will be able to manage CRA filings online
Staff Post
By Anna Mathew
By the end of 2018 charities will finally be able to do most of their government submissions and communications online. The improvements are part of the Charities Modernization Project (CHAMP) which came out of funds earmarked in the 2014 Federal Budget for IT improvements at the CRA.
The 2014 Federal Budget provided the Directorate with $23 million to modernize its IT systems over a five year period. Improving these systems will allow charities to apply for registration and file their annual returns electronically, reducing their administrative burden.
As part of CHAMP, by the end of 2018:
- Form T2050, Application to Register a Charity under the Income Tax Act, will be replaced by a new online application for registration e-service.
- Registered charities will be able to file their annual returns online through the CRA's My Business Account.
- The Charities Listings will be improved to help Canadians make informed choices about charitable giving.
Drache Aptowitzer has a September 2017 article which discusses the implications and how charities should prepare for the change to online submissions and communications. They advise:
- Assigning a person inside the charity to be the main authorized user;
- Ensuring that person is subscribed the the Charities Directorate e-lists and visits the Charities Directorate website regularly for updates;
- Ensuring that person is aware of what information about charities is publicly available on the CRA website and understands the concept of 'garbage in garbage out' (if a charity gives bad quality data to the CRA, that bad quality data is what will be displayed in the publicly accessible CRA systems); and,
- Ensuring that person is aware that all documents filed by the charity with the CRA will be available to all authorized users, so the charity should assess who currently has authorization and maintain their policy and update their authorization lists regularly.
Visit the full Drache Aptowitzer article here.
New Seminars! Take the Lead: Principles for Administrative Leadership in the Arts
Young Associates is thrilled to be partnering with WorkInCulture to launch Take the Lead: Principles for Administrative Leadership for the Arts, a new two day seminar series for increasing managerial and governance skills in arts administration. Running October 12 & 13, 2017, instructors from Young Associates and WorkInCulture will deliver sessions on understanding financial statements, payroll, WSIB, and HR. Get more details here.
Young Associates is hiring!
Young Associates is looking for a new administrator, associate, and senior associate. Please visit our Careers page to view the current job posting.
T4 slips can now be distributed electronically
In an attempt to encourage efficiency and reduce administrative burden for filers, the 2017 Federal Budget allows employers to electronically issue T4 slips to active employees, even without obtaining prior consent. Until this announcement, employers could send one copy of the T4 electronically, provided they had the employee's consent ahead of time, (as well as still providing one paper copy), or they could send two paper copies to the employee's mailing address or provide two paper copies in person.
The Budget announcement means that for 2017 T4 slips (and those for any subsequent year), employers now do not have to obtain consent from an employee to distribute their T4 electronically, provided the following considerations are met:
- the employee is currently active (not on leave, has not left the company)
(by the last day of February in the year following the calendar year to which the T4 applies) the employer provides the employee
a secure electronic portal through which the employee can obtain access their T4 slip,
a secure site for printing the T4 slip, and
an option to receive paper copies of the T4 slip, upon request.
The employer must distribute 2 paper copies of the T4:
- if the employee has requested that method
- if the employee is on leave or no longer with the company
- if the employee can not reasonably be expected to access the T4 electronically
- if the employer cannot meet the above conditions for secure electronic transfer (unless the employee had previously provided consent to receive the T4 slip electronically)
It is important to note that Budget 2017 does not consider email to be a secure method of transferring sensitive information included in the T4 slip, and it does not permit employers to use email as a method of distributing the T4 to employees without their prior consent. So, the only case in which a T4 slip is permitted to be distributed to an employee by email is if the employee has previously provided (written or electronic) consent to receive one copy of the T4 by email.
Visit this page on the CRA website for more information.
Should my company capitalize and amortize the costs of sets and costumes?
Capital assets generally include items of significant value that are owned for longer than a year, and used in operations. Spending on production can vary widely from show to show and company to company. If you are spending significant sums in these areas, it’s worth exploring this issue.
Let’s take the example of an opera company that has adopted an accounting policy of capitalizing its sets and costumes and amortizing them over 7 years, based on the fact that it draws from a “canon” of works, and therefore remounts shows from time to time.
One way to look at capital assets is as a deferred expense. You pay all the bills in Year 1, but (through amortization) you recognize the expense over the estimated useful life of the asset (in this example 7 years), so that each year of use bears its proportional estimated share of the cost (in this example 1/7 per year).
The argument in favour of capitalizing and amortizing sets and costumes would be that you expected to use them actively over the estimated 7 years, either in your own shows or as rental properties.
Let’s work through the accounting effect, step by step. In the first year of adopting this policy, you would record your sets and costumes as assets, not expenses. This would have the effect of improving your bottom line. You would of course need to record one year of amortization expense – that is, 1/7th of the purchase price. The remaining 6/7ths of the expense would be postponed to future years.
Onward to Year 2, and a new year of programming with (potentially) a new group of directors and designers. Will those artists be content to reuse Year 1’s sets and costumes? It seems likely that, in most cases, while they may reuse some “stock” items, they would prefer to create something new and different. In that instance, the company would incur new expenses for set and costume purchases. Once you set up an amortization policy, you need to follow it -- so you would amortize Year 2’s production items in the same way. Financially, the result would still feel pretty sweet, because in this year you recognize the cost of 1/7 of Year 1 purchases plus 1/7 of Year 2 purchases... but you can see where this is heading.
By the time you hit Year 7, the bottom-line advantage has disappeared because you've got seven active amortization cycles. You're also saddled with a certain amount of extra bookkeeping – and, more importantly, production expense becomes difficult to interpret. Imagine looking at the Year 7 income statement. You know for a certainty what your box office revenue was, but because related expenses and revenues are no longer matched within a fiscal period, it becomes trickier to interpret the financial result. The set and costume expense in Year 7 does not capture the cost of Year 7 shows, but rather 1/7 of the costs for each of the previous seven years.
The real "bottom line" to this story is that you can't out-run expense. You need to recognize it sooner or later. Our opera company might have been tempted to adopt the amortization policy as a gambit to improve the bottom line at a point when things weren't going well – but over the longer haul this approach doesn't put you any further ahead.
Now – let’s look at the other side of the coin. If you expense sets and costumes during the year of the show for which they were created, expense recognition is clear. That's very helpful for the purpose of evaluating financial results. But, it's also true that companies, especially larger companies in the opera and ballet worlds, DO remount productions and rent productions to other companies. If you don't amortize the cost, those future uses have no cost attached to them – and the financial statements for those years could be seen as misstated by the amount of expense that perhaps should have been attributed to them.
Expensing items in the year of the production means that companies may own a lot of stock – sets, costumes, props, etc. – that's not acknowledged on the balance sheet as an asset. However, that is how the set and costume expense is typically handled, in the experience of Young Associates staff.
The question for management is which treatment best reflects the company’s financial results? And, which treatment best applies generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) such as cost-benefit and materiality? Managers need to evaluate whether the advantage of matching revenue and expense recognition outweighs the possible misstatement of future bottom lines.
This would be an excellent topic to discuss with your accountant.
Click here for more q and a's on capital assets.
