Book Consultation

Gondaliya CPA

Corporate Tax Filing Experts

Tax Accountant for Construction Equipment Rental Companies in Ontario and Across Canada

The excavator that went out on a monthly rate in April and got bought in July is the transaction this trade handles worst. A rental purchase option ends your ownership of the machine, so a disposition has to be recorded and the class balance settled — and whether the paperwork describes a rental that turned into a sale, or a sale financed from the first payment, is a question of substance that has to be determined on the agreement itself. We also put a machine hired in from another yard on the books twice, as a cost and as revenue, instead of letting it disappear into a spread; we keep a bare machine apart from a machine supplied with an operator; and we hold machines, attachments and yard equipment in Class 8 at 20% with delivery trucks and floats in Class 10 at 30%. Whether your yard runs earthmoving iron, compaction and concrete gear, aerial lifts and telehandlers, or attachments and small tools, we take on the paperwork, the pools and the T2 — with AFFORDABLE flat fees.

1300+
5-Star Google Reviews
✅ REGISTERED CPA FIRM – VERIFY NOW

AFFORDABLE Construction Equipment Rental Company Tax Accountant

Ask an equipment rental owner what happened to the skid steer a contractor took for the summer and decided to keep, and the answer is usually that the balance was billed and the file was closed. Ask what happened to that machine in the capital cost schedule and the room goes quiet. That gap is what this page exists to close. The moment ownership passes — rental purchase option, rent-to-own, or a handshake that the rental comes off the price — a depreciable asset has been disposed of, and the disposal has to be recorded as one. Proceeds have to be identified, the class balance has to be adjusted, and the rental money already banked has to be dealt with rather than left where the bookkeeper first posted it. Whether the arrangement was a rental that later became a sale, or a sale financed from the first payment, is a question about the substance of the agreement and it has to be determined on the terms the parties actually signed; the two readings do not produce the same numbers, which is exactly why nobody should be guessing. At Gondaliya CPA we take on the yard files other accountants find awkward, on AFFORDABLE flat fees, with the returns in on time and no more tax paid than the law asks for.

As a construction equipment rental accountant we act for earthmoving and excavator yards, compaction and concrete equipment rental businesses, aerial lift and telehandler suppliers, and attachment and small-tool rental operations right across Ontario, working the file through the year instead of meeting you once at filing time. We tell you which machines have genuinely left for good, what the pools should read after they went, and where a machine brought in from another yard or a job with an operator on it needs two lines instead of one.

Let us settle the schedules so you can get on with quoting work and moving iron.

Gondaliya CPA team - accounting and tax services for construction equipment rental companies

Our Official Partners

Google Reviews
CPA Ontario
QuickBooks
Wagepoint
Xero
Stripe
Rotessa
Hubdoc
ADP

Accounting That Understands How a Construction Equipment Rental Company Actually Works

Renting machines carries a problem the rate card never shows: some of your machines are going to stop being yours. A contractor keeps one. A purchase option gets taken up. A machine turns up on a job that never belonged to you in the first place. Each of those is a different entry, and most yard books treat all three as ordinary rental revenue. That is the reality Gondaliya CPA is built around, with hands-on support for yards throughout Ontario.

🔧

The Rental That Ends in a Sale

A purchase option taken up moves the machine out of your ownership. That is a disposition to record and a class balance to settle, not simply an invoice for the amount still outstanding.

📋

Rental or Sale From Day One

Whether the arrangement was ever a rental turns on its substance and has to be determined from its terms. Assume the answer and the income lands in the wrong year.

🔁

Hired-In Machines Have Two Sides

A machine drawn from another yard makes you customer and supplier at once. The cost you paid and the revenue you billed both belong on the books, not a spread.

👷

Bare Machine or Operated

A machine on its own and a machine with somebody running it are not the same supply, and the treatment has to be determined. The operator’s own position sits on our heavy equipment operators page.

Stay Compliant and Minimize Your Construction Equipment Rental Tax

For a rental yard, getting the returns in and paying no more tax than the law requires are one job rather than two. We keep the filings on schedule while claiming every machine, truck, part and yard dollar the T2 allows, so the returns go in complete and there is nothing sitting in them to argue about.

🔧

Where a Conversion Goes Wrong

The machine goes out on a monthly rate and comes back sold. A contractor takes an excavator for the summer, decides to keep it, and asks for the rental already paid to come off the price. Once that happens the machine has left your ownership, and a disposition has to be recorded no matter what heading sits on the closing invoice. Two questions then have to be answered rather than assumed. The first is how the arrangement is characterised: a rental that later turned into a sale, or a sale financed from the first payment. That turns on the substance of the agreement and must be determined on its own terms — the option price, what the payments were consideration for, what each side was committed to and from when. It is not decided by which box the paperwork ticks, and no single feature settles it. The second question is what happens to the rental money already banked. Where it is credited against the price, how much ends up as proceeds on the disposal and how much stays as rental income both follow from the agreement, and both have to be supported if anybody asks. We do not pick a split for you, and neither should a bookkeeper. What we do is read the agreement, reach a position that can be defended, and settle the capital cost schedule in the year the machine actually went.

✅

CRA Obligations for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

A rental yard’s CRA file comes down to a short list of recurring items, and the same ones surface every year. Rental and delivery are taxable supplies at 13% in Ontario, with input tax credits available on machine purchases, parts and operating costs, and once taxable revenue passes $30,000 across four consecutive calendar quarters registration stops being optional. Under the Excise Tax Act, subsection 168(9), tax on a deposit is collected when the deposit is applied against an invoice, not when it is taken. Where a contractor stops paying, ITA 20(1)(l) allows a reserve while collection is genuinely in doubt and ITA 20(1)(p) gives the deduction once the debt is actually uncollectible — two separate entries at two different times, and they should never be run together. Whether yard staff and machine operators are employees or contractors is settled on the facts of each working relationship. Employees get T4 slips and genuine subcontract suppliers get T4A; WSIB coverage attaches from the first hire; source deductions reconcile to the PD7A; the T4 and T4 Summary are due by the last day of February; Ontario Employer Health Tax starts once total payroll passes $1,000,000; and the penalty on a late remittance is graduated and reaches 10%.

📈

Year-End Deliverables for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

At the year-end a rental corporation needs a trial balance and statements that a lender and a reviewer can both follow without asking questions. Machines are carried at net book value by class, with anything sold or converted during the year lifted out of the schedule instead of left standing in it. Proceeds on machines sold appear apart from rental revenue. Hire-in cost and the revenue earned on brought-in machines are both shown rather than netted. Receivables are stated against the payment terms contractors actually work to, deposits held on bookings that have not started are shown for what they are, and the trucks, the floats and the yard or its lease are stated separately from the rental machines themselves. The T2 with GIFI then has to tie back to the HST returns already filed, because that is the first comparison anybody makes. Everything on that list is prepared and delivered on schedule.

Accounting & Tax Experts for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

Gondaliya CPA construction equipment rental accounting expertsGondaliya CPA construction equipment rental tax experts
  • AFFORDABLE + Registered CPA Firm
  • Business and Corporate Tax Expert
  • Small & Medium Business Expert
  • Accounting, bookkeeping, and tax filing
  • CPA (Chartered Professional Accountant)
  • 1300+ 5-star Google reviews
  • 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
  • 60-Day Fees Matching Policy

Why Choose Our Accounting Services for Construction Equipment Rental Companies?

1
🎯

Tax Planning — Conversions & Pools

We work out what a machine leaving under a purchase option does to the pool before the option is written, so the answer is known in advance. The $500,000 small-business limit stays protected while we do it.

2
💳

Consulting — Hired-In & Operated Work

Our bookkeeping puts brought-in cost and hired-out revenue on two lines, keeps bare rental apart from operated work, and shows the real margin sitting under each of them.

3
🛡

CRA Representation — Disposals & Records

When CRA asks why a machine left the schedule, we answer with the agreement, the tickets and the pool calculation, and seek relief on Form RC4288 where a prior error produced the penalties.

4
🏢

Bookkeeping — Machines In and Out

Every machine that arrives, goes out, comes back or stops being yours is recorded as it happens, so the schedule at the year-end is a record and not a reconstruction.

★
Registered CPA Ontario
★
1300+ ★★★★★
Google Reviews
★
30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
★
60-Day Fees-Matching Policy
ACTIVELY ACCEPTING
Equipment Rental Clients
Includes personal T1 filing for you and your family
Convenient Availability
Weekend and evening support until 9 PM
Always Within Reach
Just a call away when you need us

Construction Equipment Rental Tax and Accounting Services in Ontario

📄

Corporate Tax Filing (T2) for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

T2 preparation with conversions recorded as dispositions, machines in Class 8, trucks and floats in Class 10, and the class balance settled in the year the machine left.

💳

Bookkeeping & Accounting for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

Hire-in cost and hire-out revenue on separate lines, bare rental split from operated work, and statements built on records that reconcile.

💵

Payroll Services for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

Yard and driver payroll with WSIB from the first hire, PD7A remittances, T4 and T4A slips, and the February deadline met every year.

🧾

GST/HST Filing for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

AFFORDABLE HST filing with 13% on rental and delivery, deposits handled under the Excise Tax Act, and every credit on machine buying recovered.

📈

Tax Planning for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

Year-end date, the small-business limit, machine purchase timing, and what a conversion does to the pool modelled before the option is signed.

⏳

Corporate Catch-Up Filing for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

File overdue T2 and HST years, rebuild the machine schedule and the disposals nobody recorded, and get back onside with accurate catch-up work.

🛡

CRA Audit Resolution for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

Support on conversion characterisation, disposal and worker classification reviews, handled from the first letter through to the last one.

📊

CPA Financial Statements (Notice to Reader) for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

CPA-compiled statements lenders accept, carrying machines at net book value by class with sold and converted units taken out.

🏢

Incorporation Services for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

Incorporation end to end — NUANS name search, articles, share structure — plus the section 85 rollover that moves machines, trucks and yard equipment in.

📒

Catch-Up Bookkeeping Services for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

Months or years of contracts, hire-in invoices, parts bills and machine purchases reconstructed, so the schedule finally matches the yard.

🌐

US Corporation & LLC Tax Filing for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

Cross-border work where a machine leaves the country or a shareholder is non-resident or American, covering the withholding and the T1135 side of it.

📜

Voluntary Disclosure Program for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

Come forward on conversions never settled, disposals never reported or slips never filed before CRA calls, cancelling penalties through a Voluntary Disclosures Program application.

Accounting & Tax Services Tailored for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

Real, practitioner-level CPA expertise for earthmoving and excavator yards, compaction and concrete equipment rental businesses, aerial lift and telehandler suppliers, and attachment and small-tool rental operations across Ontario — built for a company whose machines sometimes stop being machines it owns.

  • Your T2 goes in with the GIFI on Schedule 100 and Schedule 125 set up so bare rental, operated work, hire-in recoveries, delivery charges and proceeds on machines sold each sit on their own line.
  • Where a purchase option was taken up during the year we record a disposition, because ownership of that machine left the company whatever the closing invoice was headed, and a sale dressed as a final instalment is still a sale.
  • Under the Income Tax Act, subsection 13(1), an amount comes back into income where proceeds on a disposal exceed the undepreciated capital cost of the class, so the pool gets settled in the year the machine went rather than three years afterwards.
  • We claim capital cost allowance on Schedule 8 with machines, attachments and yard equipment in Class 8 at 20%, delivery trucks and floats in Class 10 at 30%, and the rental desk computers in Class 50 at 55%.
  • Where a class is emptied for less than the balance left sitting in it we claim the terminal loss, a deduction worth $9,000 or more on one retired machine and one that almost no yard claims unprompted.
  • We post a hired-in machine on both sides: the charge the other yard raised against you as a cost of that job, and the amount you billed your own customer as revenue, never one net figure for the spread.
  • Being the customer and the supplier on the same machine on the same day is ordinary work in this trade, and books that net the two off hide how much of the month ran on iron the company does not own.
  • We split bare rental from operated work in the ledger from the first month, because a machine hired alone and a machine hired with somebody running it are different supplies that carry very different costs.
  • We keep a machine-by-machine record of what went out, what came back, and what never came back, so an option taken up in July shows on the file in July instead of surfacing at the year-end.
  • We capture supplier bills, parts, hauling and repair invoices through Dext and reconcile monthly, which on one yard recovered $6,400 of input tax credits that had been sitting in unentered parts invoices for a single quarter.
  • We file T4 slips for the yard and driver staff on the payroll and T4A slips for genuine subcontract hauling and repair suppliers, so every amount the company deducted is reported the way CRA expects to see it.
  • We run the payroll itself, withholding income tax, CPP and EI and remitting on the PD7A, because the penalty on a late remittance is graduated and reaches 10% of the amount that should have gone in.
  • The T4 slips and the T4 Summary go in by the last day of February, and on one yard that alone closed out about $2,900 of slip penalties CRA had already assessed against the company.
  • WSIB coverage is registered from the first hire, because a yard where machines are loaded, chained down and started in tight quarters is not a place to be carrying that exposure with nothing behind it.
  • Ontario Employer Health Tax starts once the company’s total payroll passes $1,000,000, a line a busy yard steps over without noticing and one that costs real money the first year nobody reports it.
  • Hiring a machine out and delivering it are both taxable supplies at 13% in Ontario, and the $30,000 of taxable revenue over four consecutive calendar quarters that forces registration arrives sooner than a two-machine yard expects.
  • Under the Excise Tax Act, subsection 168(9), a deposit sits outside the tax until it is applied, so the tax point is the day it is set against an invoice and not the day the contractor handed it over.
  • A charge for damage to a returned machine is read against your own rental agreement before it is coded, because the wording of that agreement is what decides the answer and one treatment should then be used every time.
  • Where a purchase option is taken up, what you are supplying changes partway through and the invoicing has to follow, so the agreement gets looked at rather than the yard carrying on billing as though nothing had happened.
  • We claim input tax credits on machine purchases, parts, hauling, repairs and yard rent, which on a company that bought two machines in one quarter came to $31,000 recovered in a single filing period.
  • We set a fiscal year-end that does not land in the middle of the building season, so the pools are being settled while machines are standing in the yard and somebody has time to walk them.
  • For the owners we choose how much comes out as T4 salary and how much as dividends, enough salary to keep RRSP room building and the rest in dividends, holding the combined cost near 11.2% (from July 1, 2026) instead of a personal rate reaching 53.53%.
  • We keep active income inside the $500,000 small-business limit and watch the associated-corporation rules where the same family also owns the yard property or a second hauling company alongside the rental operation.
  • We time machine buying against the year-end so the 20% Class 8 rate lands the deduction where it is worth most, and we model what a likely conversion will do to the pool before the option is ever written.
  • Getting the shares to qualify under ITA 110.6, and the $1.275M exemption it carries, takes a two-year runway and a balance sheet cleared of anything that would sink the asset test, so we start on it early.
  • We rebuild bare rental, operated work, delivery, hire-in recoveries and proceeds on machines sold across the unfiled years from bank deposits, issued contracts and whatever the rental desk still holds, then file the oldest year first.
  • Filing late costs 5% of the balance owing and a further 1% for each month it stays outstanding, up to twelve, so the oldest return goes in first and the compounding stops there.
  • We restate the capital cost schedule for every machine that left the yard in a year nobody filed, because a purchase option taken up in an unfiled year is still a disposition that has to be picked up.
  • We reconstruct hire-in costs from the other yards’ invoices so the caught-up statements show what was brought in and what it earned, rather than a gross margin nobody in the business can explain to a lender.
  • We bring the years forward through a Voluntary Disclosures Program application on Form RC199, which on one three-year catch-up removed $22,000 of penalties the owner had assumed were simply the price of falling behind.
  • When CRA asks why a machine left the schedule, we produce the rental agreement, the purchase option, the delivery and return tickets and the closing invoice, which is the paper trail the question is really about.
  • Where the characterisation of a conversion is in issue we argue it from the terms of the agreement, because the answer lives in what the parties committed to and not in what the bookkeeper happened to code.
  • Where recapture on a disposal is challenged we show the pool calculation and the proceeds figure that produced it, so the adjustment becomes a number on a schedule rather than an estimate imposed from outside the business.
  • Under ITA 152(7) CRA may assess an amount it considers appropriate where a return or the records behind it are not produced, which is the practical reason a file gets answered inside the deadlines given.
  • The Notice of Objection goes in inside the ninety-day window, and where a prior error produced the penalties we seek relief on Form RC4288, which cancelled about $11,500 of penalties and interest on one yard file.
  • A lender will not advance against a machine purchase on a spreadsheet, so we produce CSRS 4200 compilation engagement statements covering two fiscal years, with the note disclosure the credit file actually gets read on.
  • The statement of financial position carries machines at net book value by class, with anything already gone out under a purchase option taken off the schedule rather than left there inflating the asset base.
  • We show proceeds on machines sold separately from rental revenue, because a lender reading a strong year needs to know how much of it came from renting iron out and how much from selling it off.
  • Hire-in cost and hire-in revenue are both presented, so the statements show the real gross margin on brought-in work instead of a thin net figure that makes a busy year look like a poor one.
  • Statements are delivered within 30 days of us getting your records and the year’s T2 numbers, and on one file that timing is what got a $180,000 machine advance approved before the season started.
  • We incorporate the business, which gives the owners limited liability on machines working sites they do not control and brings the combined rate on the first $500,000 of active income near 11.2% against 53.53% personally.
  • Existing machines, trucks and yard equipment move into the company on a section 85 election filed on Form T2057 at amounts the owners choose, deferring the gain that selling them across at market value would crystallise.
  • We set the opening Class 8, Class 10 and Class 12 balances from the rollover so the company’s first year starts on a schedule that is right, not one reconstructed from memory four years later.
  • We register the Business Number, the HST account and the payroll account in the company’s own name, and move the insurance and the customer agreements across so the old trading name is not still on the paperwork.
  • We decide whether the yard property, where the owners hold it, belongs inside the operating company or outside it, because real property in the opco can put the share-sale exemption at risk long before anybody is selling.
  • We rebuild neglected books from bank deposits, rental contracts, supplier bills and delivery tickets, so a yard that stopped posting two seasons ago ends up with a ledger somebody can actually file a return from.
  • We rebuild the machine-by-machine schedule from purchase invoices and mark every unit already sold or converted, which is the part of a rental yard’s books we almost always find wrong when we inherit the file.
  • We separate brought-in machine costs from machines the company owns, because a catch-up that capitalised somebody else’s iron puts assets on your balance sheet that were never yours to be depreciating at all.
  • We recover input tax credits sitting in unentered machine, parts, hauling and yard invoices, and on one two-season catch-up that came to $17,500 the owner had long since written off as gone for good.
  • Payroll is reconciled back to the PD7A month by month, and the Class 8 and Class 10 balances are rebuilt from the invoices, so the T2 that follows is filed on figures instead of guesswork.
  • Where a machine is rented to a customer who takes it across the border, or bought by one, the place of supply depends on where the machine actually went, so we look at the movement and not the billing address.
  • Where a shareholder lives outside Canada we handle the Part XIII withholding on dividends leaving the country and the NR4 slips that go with them, at the treaty rate where a treaty actually applies.
  • Form T1135 is filed where the owners’ foreign property passes $100,000, because that reporting obligation stands on its own and a late slip is penalised whether or not there was any tax to pay.
  • Where an owner or shareholder is a US citizen we run the two returns together, because the US filing reaches into a Canadian company in ways that usually surprise the family in the first year.
  • We line the two returns up so foreign tax credits actually get used, and on one shareholder that recovered $8,300 of tax that had simply been paid twice over and then left where it sat.
  • We bring the company forward where machines left under purchase options across several years and the capital cost schedule was never touched, correcting the position on your own terms rather than on a reviewer’s.
  • We disclose recapture never reported on a machine sold in an earlier year, because the disposal happened whether or not anybody wrote it down, and the penalty is the part a disclosure takes away.
  • We file the submission on Form RC199 with a full reconstruction from contracts, invoices and bank records, so the company is not left facing a figure CRA picked because nothing better had been produced.
  • Where yard staff were paid in cash and no slips were ever filed we put that right, which takes away the per-slip penalties and the assessment that lands once CRA lines your wage line up against its own records.
  • We confirm the disclosure is still voluntary before anything is sent, because CRA reaching you first is what invalidates it, and on one file that sequence preserved about $26,000 of penalty relief.

Equipment Rental Conversion & Tax Check

Six questions on purchase options, the pools behind them, machines hired in from other yards, operated work, deposits and whether incorporating is overdue. No fee shown.

1. Has every machine sold under a purchase option come out of your capital cost schedule?

2. Has anybody read the purchase option to work out whether it was ever a rental?

3. Are rental payments credited against a purchase price supported by the agreement itself?

4. Do machines hired in from other yards show a cost and a revenue rather than one net figure?

5. Is operated work billed and tracked separately from bare rental?

6. Is your construction equipment rental company incorporated?

Free CPA Consultation for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

Case Studies: Construction Equipment Rental Accounting & Tax

North Bay Equipment Rental Yard — Three Machines Sold, None Removed

The problem: Over four years a North Bay yard let three contractors buy the machines they had been renting: a mini excavator, a skid steer and a plate compactor. Each time the remaining balance was billed and the file was closed. None of the three came out of the Class 8 schedule. Capital cost allowance kept being claimed on iron that had left the yard, no proceeds were ever set against the pool, and the rental credited towards each purchase price still sat in rental income with nothing written down to support it.

What we did: We read all three agreements, reached a position on how each should be characterised, recorded the dispositions in the correct years, settled the class balance, and supported the amount treated as proceeds against the amount left as rental income.

The result:

  • $38,400 of overclaimed capital cost allowance corrected
  • Three dispositions recorded in the right years
  • Class 8 schedule matched to the machines actually in the yard

Bradford Equipment Rental — The Machines That Were Never Ours

The problem: A Bradford yard filled roughly a fifth of its orders with machines brought in from two other yards. The bookkeeper recorded only the difference between what the yard paid and what it billed, as one net amount inside rental income. Nothing showed how much of the year had run on somebody else’s iron, the hire invoices were not matched to the jobs they belonged to, and on two occasions a brought-in machine had been capitalised to Class 8 as though the company had bought it outright.

What we did: We separated hire-in cost from hire-out revenue job by job, matched every hire invoice to the order it belonged to, took the machines the company never owned off the asset schedule, and set the coding so both sides appear from the first entry onwards.

The result:

  • Brought-in work visible as cost and revenue, not a spread
  • Two machines removed from the Class 8 schedule
  • A fifth of turnover finally identified as hired in

Cornwall Equipment Rental — Operated Work Billed Like a Bare Machine

The problem: A Cornwall yard sent somebody out to run the larger machines on about a third of its jobs and billed the whole thing as one hourly line, coded the same way as a bare machine going out on a weekly rate. The two are not the same supply. Nothing on the file recorded which jobs carried a person and which did not, and those hours were being paid through a mix of payroll and invoices with no note of why either route had been used. Deposits taken to hold machines were being reported as income the day they arrived.

What we did: We split operated work from bare rental in the ledger and on the invoice, documented how each arrangement had been set up, and corrected the deposit timing under the Excise Tax Act.

The result:

  • $14,200 of HST and income timing corrected across two years
  • Operated and bare work separated on the invoice
  • Deposits recognised when applied, not when received

Our Simple Process

How We Work With Construction Equipment Rental Companies

Know Exact Fees within 2 Minutes NOW

Our clear, efficient process ensures every step is transparent, building trust and long-term client relationships.

Here’s a simplified process approach:
Step 1

Kickoff (Document Request)

Prior T2 returns, the machine list with purchase invoices, every rental purchase option and rent-to-own agreement on file, hire-in invoices from other yards, delivery and return tickets, maintenance records, payroll, the yard lease and bank statements.

Step 2

First 30 Days (Cleanup & Setup)

QuickBooks Online or Xero set up against your rental desk software, the Class 8, 10, 12 and 50 balances rebuilt from invoices, and every machine already sold or converted taken off the schedule.

Step 3

Monthly Close

Bare rental, operated work, hire-in cost and hire-out revenue posted separately, machine movements recorded as they happen, HST with deposits timed correctly, and payroll reconciled to the PD7A.

Step 4

Quarterly Planning Review

Salary and dividend mix, machine buying against the year-end, the pool effect of any purchase option about to be written, the bad-debt position on slow contractors, and cash into the quiet months.

Step 5

Year-End Close & T2 Filing

Trial balance, statements with machines at net book value by class and the year’s disposals settled, proceeds shown apart from rental revenue, T2 with GIFI, and the file ready for CRA.

Get Your Construction Equipment Rental Taxes Done Right Today

Transparent Pricing for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

Affordable Pricing for Construction Equipment Rental Companies

Know Exact Fees within 2 Minutes NOW

We believe in clear, upfront pricing so you know exactly what to expect. All fees include HST.

  • Tax Preparation (Corporation) — From $400
  • Tax Return Filing (Corporation) — From $400
  • Tax Compliance Audit — FREE CRA audit support for our clients
  • Tax Strategy — FREE for our clients
  • Accounting Base Plan — From $100 per month
  • Bookkeeping Management — Free for our Accounting clients
  • Financial Reporting — Free for our Accounting clients
  • Business Formation — Flat $35
  • Incorporation Process — Flat $35
  • Entity Setup Assistance — Flat $35
  • Full-Service Payroll — From $125 per month

Payment is by Interac e-Transfer to info@gondaliyacpa.ca only. Security question: Not Applicable, as auto-deposit is enabled.

Meet Your Lead Construction Equipment Rental Accountant

The same two people handle your file every year: the machine schedule, the agreements sitting behind each disposal, and the corporate return, all in one place.

Sharad Gondaliya CPA

Sharad Gondaliya, CPA

Principal

Bio

647-212-9559
sharad@gondaliyacpa.ca

Vandana Goel CPA

Vandana Goel, CPA

Accounting Specialist

Bio

647-250-0242
vandana@gondaliyacpa.ca

What Our Clients Say

Over 1300 five-star Google reviews, left by owners of rental yards, equipment businesses and contracting firms in Ontario and well beyond it.

Serving Construction Equipment Rental Companies Across Ontario

We act for equipment rental yards throughout Ontario, from a single machine on a monthly rate to multi-yard operations. What we bring is the part that usually goes wrong: knowing when a machine has stopped being yours, what that does to the pools behind it, how a machine hired in from another yard belongs on the books, and why operated work is not the same supply as a bare machine on a rate.

Toronto (ON)

55 Queen St E Ste 1205, Toronto, ON M5C 1R6, Canada

+1 (647) 212-9559

9:00 AM – 8:30 PM (Mon – Sun)

Mississauga (ON)

2100 Camilla Rd #716, Mississauga, ON L5A 2J8

+1 (647) 212-9559

9:00 AM – 8:30 PM (Mon – Sun)

Brampton (ON)

4 Starhill Crescent, Brampton, ON L6R 2P9, Canada

+1 (647) 212-9559

9:00 AM – 8:30 PM (Mon – Sun)

Scarborough (ON)

24 Clementine Square, Scarborough, ON M1G 2V7, Canada

+1 (647) 212-9559

9:00 AM – 8:30 PM (Mon – Sun)

Vaughan (ON)

19 Cabinet Crescent, Woodbridge, ON L4L 6H9, Canada

+1 (647) 212-9559

9:00 AM – 8:30 PM (Mon – Sun)

Oshawa (ON)

210 Durham St, Oshawa, ON L1J 5R3, Canada

+1 (647) 212-9559

9:00 AM – 8:30 PM (Mon – Sun)

Ottawa (ON)

2090 Neepawa Ave a314, Ottawa, ON K2A 3L6, Canada

+1 (647) 212-9559

9:00 AM – 8:30 PM (Mon – Sun)

Etobicoke (ON)

60 Stevenson Rd #1601, Etobicoke, ON M9V 2B4, Canada

+1 (647) 212-9559

9:00 AM – 8:30 PM (Mon – Sun)

Hamilton (ON)

70 Starling Dr, Hamilton, ON L9A 0C5, Canada

+1 (647) 212-9559

9:00 AM – 8:30 PM (Mon – Sun)

Guelph (ON)

1155 Gordon St, Guelph, ON N1L 1S8, Canada

+1 (647) 212-9559

9:00 AM – 8:30 PM (Mon – Sun)

Windsor (ON)

4387 Guppy Ct, Windsor, ON N9G 2N8, Canada

+1 (647) 212-9559

9:00 AM – 8:30 PM (Mon – Sun)

North York (ON)

150 Graydon Hall Dr #912, North York, ON M3A 3B2, Canada

+1 (647) 212-9559

9:00 AM – 8:30 PM (Mon – Sun)

Construction Equipment Rental Accounting & Tax FAQs

Should I incorporate my construction equipment rental company?
Two things usually decide it. The first is how much money stays in the business: a corporation pays roughly 11.2% combined in Ontario on its first $500,000 of active income, where the same money taken personally can be taxed at up to 53.53%, so the saving is real only if you leave earnings in rather than drawing everything out. The second is the machines. A yard that owns iron needs capital cost allowance pools with a clear history behind them, and a company is where that history is easiest to keep straight — particularly once machines start leaving under purchase options. Limited liability counts for something too when your machines are working on sites you do not control. Where incorporating makes sense, we handle the section 85 rollover on Form T2057 and set the opening class balances from it.
A customer wants to buy the machine they have been renting. What happens?
Something more than an invoice. When the customer takes ownership, the machine has been disposed of, and that has to go on the books as a disposition in the year it happens, whatever heading the paperwork carries. The proceeds have to be identified, the balance of the class the machine sat in has to be adjusted, and capital cost allowance has to stop being claimed on it. What most yards do instead is bill the remaining amount, bank it, and leave the machine sitting in the schedule — which is how a company ends up depreciating iron a customer has been running for years. Brought in before the deal closes, this is one entry. Brought in four years later, it is a restatement.
Do the rental payments come off the purchase price?
That is up to the agreement, and it is a question answered by reading it rather than by applying a rule. Where the agreement does credit rental already paid against the price, that money has to be dealt with rather than left where the bookkeeper first put it: some of it will be proceeds on the disposal and some of it will stay as rental income, and both figures have to be supported by what the parties actually agreed. There is no standard split, and anybody offering you one has not read your contract. We will not prescribe an allocation for you. We work out a position from the document, write down the reasoning behind it, and keep that with the file so it can be explained later.
Was it a rental, or a sale from the start?
It has to be determined, and that is the honest answer. An arrangement can be a rental that later becomes a sale, or a sale financed from the first payment with rental language sitting on top of it. Which one you have turns on the substance of the agreement — what the option costs, what the payments were consideration for, what each side was committed to and from when. No single feature decides it and there is no threshold to measure it against, which is why we read the document and reach a reasoned position instead of assuming one. It matters because the two characterisations put income in different years and do different things to your capital cost schedule, so a guess is expensive in either direction.
What happens to the machine in my capital cost schedule?
It comes out, in the year ownership passed. The proceeds are applied against the balance of the class the machine was in, and under the Income Tax Act, subsection 13(1), an amount is brought back into income where those proceeds exceed the undepreciated capital cost of that class. That is the step almost nobody takes. The machine stays in the schedule, capital cost allowance keeps being claimed on it, and after three or four of these the deduction on the return has no relationship to the iron standing in the yard. It is also among the easiest things for a reviewer to find, because your own machine list will not agree with your own schedule. Settling it in the right year is simple. Settling it four years late is not.
I re-rented a machine from another yard. How do I record it?
On both sides, as two entries. What the other yard charged you is a cost of that job, and what you billed your customer is revenue. You are the customer and the supplier on the same machine on the same day, and both of those facts belong in the ledger. The temptation is to post only the difference, because the difference is what you actually made, but a net figure hides how much of your turnover ran on machines you do not own, which is precisely what a lender or a buyer will ask about. The other thing to get right is that a hired-in machine is not yours to capitalise. It has no place in your capital cost schedule, because you never acquired it.
Does sending an operator with the machine change the arrangement?
It changes what you are supplying. A machine hired on its own and a machine hired with somebody running it are not the same supply, and the treatment of each has to be determined from how the engagement is actually set up — what was agreed, who directs the work, and what the customer is paying for. That is not settled by looking at the rate line on an invoice. In practice it means operated jobs need to be identifiable in the ledger and on the paperwork from the first day, so that whatever position is taken can be supported afterwards. The tax position of the operator personally is a separate subject with its own answers, and we deal with that on our heavy equipment operators page.
Do I charge HST on a deposit?
Not when you take it. Under the Excise Tax Act, subsection 168(9), a deposit given to hold a machine sits outside the tax until it is applied, so the tax point is the day it is set against an invoice and not the day the contractor handed the money over. The practical consequence is that a yard holding deposits on machines going out next month has not yet collected tax on them, and its return should not say that it has. The error runs both ways: some yards report the tax early and remit money they have not received, others never pick it up at all when the deposit is finally applied. Either way the return and the ledger disagree.
When does a deposit become income?
When it is applied to a supply you have made, not when it lands in the account. Until then it is money held against work that has not happened, and the balance sheet should show it that way rather than folding it into rental income. This gets noticed in two places. A lender reading strong revenue is entitled to know how much of it is deposits on machines still standing in the yard. And a year-end that counts unapplied deposits as earned makes the year look better than it was while pulling tax forward into it. A forfeited deposit is a different question again, and it is answered by what your own rental agreement says happens when a contractor walks away.
A contractor has not paid and still has my machine. What can I claim?
Two different deductions at two different times, and they should not be run together. While collection is genuinely in doubt, ITA 20(1)(l) allows a reserve against the amount owing, which is a judgement made on the facts as they stand at the year-end and revisited each year after that. Later, when the amount is genuinely beyond recovery, the write-off itself becomes deductible under ITA 20(1)(p). The reserve is provisional and comes back into income once it is no longer justified; the bad-debt deduction is the final step. Keep the demands, the correspondence and whatever you know about the contractor’s position, because a reserve is only as good as the reasons written down behind it. Getting the machine back is a separate problem and does not change any of this.
Is a major repair deductible now?
It depends on what the work did to the machine. Work that restores a machine to the condition it was meant to be in is a current expense, deductible in the year it is done. Work that materially improves the machine, or extends the life it would otherwise have had, is capital and goes into the class the machine sits in. A rebuild that puts a worn-out machine back to work is usually the first. A rebuild that leaves it better than it was the day you bought it is usually the second. We will not hand you a dollar figure or a percentage that decides it, because there is not one. The test is about the nature of the work and its effect on the machine, and the reasoning is written down while the invoice is still fresh.
What CCA class is an excavator?
An excavator, along with loaders, skid steers, compactors, attachments and the yard equipment behind them, generally goes to Class 8 at 20%. Delivery trucks and the floats that move machines belong in Class 10 at 30%. Computers and the rental desk system go to Class 50 at 55%, small tools and application software to Class 12 at 100%, and the yard itself, or its lease where you rent rather than own, sits in Class 1 or Class 13. Keeping the classes apart matters because the rates are nowhere near each other and because the disposals are not either: a machine leaving under a purchase option moves the Class 8 balance and nothing else, which you can only see if the schedule is not one blended pool.
What records does CRA want, and what if I never filed?
ITA 230 requires books and records to be kept for six years, and on a rental yard that means a good deal more than bank statements: the rental agreement, the purchase option, the delivery and return tickets, the maintenance record, the hire-in invoices from other yards, and the paperwork on every machine that left. Those documents are what a position on a conversion stands or falls on. Under ITA 152(7) CRA may assess an amount it considers appropriate where the records are not produced, which is a practical reason to hold them rather than a threat. If you have never filed, come forward first: a Voluntary Disclosures Program application on Form RC199, or taxpayer relief on Form RC4288 where an error produced the penalties, is a very different conversation from the one that opens with CRA’s letter.

Related Industries We Serve

Accountant for Building Supply Companies

  • Counter and yard sales margin
  • Contractor account terms
  • T2 filing and compiled statements

Accountant for Heavy Equipment Operators

  • The operator’s own tax position
  • Per-hour billing and machine costs
  • Corporate tax planning and T2 filing

Accountant for Scaffolding Companies

  • Site rental contracts and job costing
  • Crew payroll and WSIB coverage
  • T2 filing and monthly bookkeeping

Accountant for Incorporated Businesses

  • Share structure and section 85 elections
  • Salary and dividend mix
  • Year-end statements and the T2

Construction Equipment Rental Accounting & Tax Done Right.

T2 filing where a machine sold under a purchase option is recorded as a disposition in the year ownership passed, the class balance settled and the rental already credited supported rather than guessed at; the characterisation of every conversion determined from the agreement itself instead of assumed; machines brought in from other yards carried as a cost and a revenue rather than a spread; operated work kept apart from bare rental; machines, attachments and yard equipment in Class 8 at 20% with delivery trucks and floats in Class 10 at 30%; and 13% on rental and delivery with deposits timed under the Excise Tax Act. AFFORDABLE flat fees instead of hourly billing. Licensed CPA Ontario. 1300+ five-star reviews. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee.



Scroll to Top