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Gondaliya CPA

Corporate Tax Filing Experts

Tax Accountant for Grant Writing Consultants in Ontario and Across Canada

The proposal is written, revised, filed, and sitting with the funder. Your success fee is in the engagement letter. None of it is income yet, because paragraph 12(1)(b) of the Income Tax Act brings in amounts receivable, and an amount is receivable only where you hold an enforceable right to be paid — which a fee conditional on approval does not give you until the decision arrives. Then it arrives, and the whole fee belongs to that fiscal year whether or not you have raised an invoice. We fix that cut-off on the dated award or decline letter, and charge 13% under the Excise Tax Act on your fee even where the client is a registered charity, because the exemptions attaching to what a charity supplies say nothing about what you supply to it. Then the T2 is filed, with laptops at 55% in Class 50, desks and shelving at 20% in Class 8, and proposal software at 100% in Class 12. Flat AFFORDABLE fees, never hourly.

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AFFORDABLE Grant Writing Consultant Tax Accountant

Every other question on this file sits downstream of one: when does a fee that depends on somebody else’s decision become income? Section 9 of the Income Tax Act computes profit from a business on an accrual footing, and accrual gets explained to consultants as billing what you have finished. On a success-contingent engagement that explanation is simply wrong. Paragraph 12(1)(b) of the same Act brings into income amounts receivable in respect of services rendered in the course of the business, whether or not they have been received in the year, and the operative word is receivable. It asks whether a legal entitlement exists. It does not ask whether the writing is done. A consultant who has researched, drafted and submitted a complete sixty-page application has rendered the service in full and still holds no right to a fee the engagement letter made payable only on approval. Nothing is receivable, so nothing is income. When the funder says yes, the right crystallises and the entire amount lands in that year, invoice or no invoice.

As an accountant for grant writing consultants, we work with independent proposal writers, funding consultants retained by charities and non-profit organisations, practices writing capital and operating applications for municipalities and institutions, and consultants who bid on behalf of private companies. The statements you finish with draw a visible line between the fees you had genuinely earned by the year-end and the applications that were still sitting with somebody else.

Hand us the engagement letters, the decision letters and the ledger, and keep your own hours for the writing.

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Accounting That Understands How a Grant Writing Consultant Actually Works

No other professional service finishes its work and then waits months to learn whether it will be paid for it at all. The application is complete, the portal has closed, and whether your fee exists is now in a funder’s hands. That is not a cash-flow quirk to be managed around. It decides which tax year your income lands in, and on this file it is the first thing we settle.

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The Fee Nobody Owes You Yet

Submitting the application is not a billing event. Until the funder decides, no enforceable right to the success fee exists, so there is nothing receivable and nothing to report, however finished the work and however confident everyone is.

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The Decision Letter Is the Date

Approval creates the right, and the right creates the income. The funder’s dated letter, not your invoice and not the deposit, is the document that fixes which fiscal year the fee belongs to.

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Your Invoice to a Charity Is Taxable

A charity may make exempt supplies of its own. That says nothing about yours. Consulting supplied to it carries 13% in Ontario, and assuming otherwise is the most expensive mistake available on this file.

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The Grant Is Not Your Money

Funding awarded to a client is the client’s receipt and, under paragraph 12(1)(x) of the Income Tax Act, the client’s question. Your income is the fee. Your revenue line must never be grossed up by an award.

Stay Compliant and Minimize Your Grant Writing Tax

Filing on time and paying the least tax the law allows are one exercise here, and both start at the recognition date. Get it wrong and you have either paid a year early on a fee nobody ever owed you, or left a year of real income out of a return CRA can still reach.

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What the Recognition Date Changes

Pulling a success fee into the year the application went in, rather than the year it was approved, moves income between years in both directions and neither is safe. Report early on a bid that later fails and you have paid tax on money you never had an enforceable right to receive. Report late on a bid that succeeded and the understated year stays open. It also moves the small business limit about: under section 125 of the Income Tax Act the first $500,000 of active business income is charged at about 12.2% in Ontario, a limit measured on that income and not on invoices issued, so two large approvals arriving together can carry you past it where the same two, falling in the years their decisions were actually made, would not. And the Excise Tax Act asks a different question again: the $30,000 registration threshold, over four consecutive calendar quarters, is tested on the taxable supplies you make, so both dates get checked.

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CRA Obligations for Grant Writing Consultants

Compliance here is not one return in the spring. We file the T2 on the recognition dates your engagement letters and decision letters actually support, file GST/HST returns charging 13% on every consulting fee including those billed to a registered charity or a non-profit organisation, and recover input tax credits on funder databases, research reports, subscriptions and software. We keep the doubtful-debt reserve under paragraph 20(1)(l) of the Income Tax Act apart from the paragraph 20(1)(p) write-off, reconcile source deductions to the PD7A, and register WSIB coverage from your first hire.

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Year-End Deliverables for Grant Writing Consultants

A year-end on this file has to show, engagement by engagement, which fees had been earned and which were still conditional at the balance sheet date, because a reader who cannot see the difference cannot use the statements for anything. We produce a trial balance and financial statements listing every open application against the fee attached to it, carry amounts receivable only where an enforceable right existed on that date, and keep the reserve and the write-off as the two separate items they are. Then the T2 goes in, its GIFI reconciling to the HST returns you filed through the year.

Accounting & Tax Experts for Grant Writing Consultants

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Why Choose Our Accounting Services for Grant Writing Consultants?

1
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Tax Planning — Fee Timing & Structure

We settle which year each conditional fee belongs to, plan ahead where several decisions are expected to cluster, and keep active business income inside the small business limit rather than discovering it afterwards.

2
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Consulting — Charity and Non-Profit Clients

We review your client mix, confirm which invoices carry 13% irrespective of the recipient’s own status, and correct the exempt-by-association assumption before it becomes years of uncollected tax.

3
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CRA Representation — Timing & Entitlement

When CRA asks why a fee sat in one year and not the year before, we produce the engagement letter, the submission record and the funder’s dated decision, and seek relief on Form RC4288 where an error caused penalties.

4
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Bookkeeping — Pipeline and the Exit

We plan the cash that has to last through a six-month adjudication, hand a lender something it can actually underwrite, and lay the groundwork for selling the practice long before you want to.

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Grant Writing Tax and Accounting Services in Ontario

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Corporate Tax Filing (T2) for Grant Writing Consultants

T2 preparation with every success fee reported in the year the funder’s decision created the right to it, advance amounts kept separate, and capital cost allowance claimed on Schedule 8.

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Bookkeeping & Accounting for Grant Writing Consultants

Engagement-level books that keep filed-but-undecided applications out of receivables and bring the fee in on the date the award or decline letter carries.

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Payroll Services for Grant Writing Consultants

Payroll for researchers, editors and proposal coordinators: WSIB registered from the first hire, PD7A remittances never late, and T4 slips in before the deadline.

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GST/HST Filing for Grant Writing Consultants

AFFORDABLE HST filing. Every client fee at 13%, charities among them, your registration date measured against the $30,000 line, and no input tax credit left behind.

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Tax Planning for Grant Writing Consultants

Planning on which year a conditional fee lands in, how advance amounts are handled, owner compensation, and the structure you will eventually sell out of.

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Corporate Catch-Up Filing for Grant Writing Consultants

Overdue T2 and HST years brought in, the submission and decision trail behind each fee rebuilt first, and your standing with CRA restored without guesswork.

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CRA Audit Resolution for Grant Writing Consultants

Support on recognition dates, charity invoicing and subcontractor status reviews, carried from the opening CRA letter right through to the closing one.

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CPA Financial Statements (Notice to Reader) for Grant Writing Consultants

Compiled statements a lender will actually read, with earned fees and the live application pipeline presented so the difference between them is visible.

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Incorporation Services for Grant Writing Consultants

Incorporation arranged so the new company’s very first engagement posts into a chart of accounts already able to separate conditional fees from earned ones.

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Catch-Up Bookkeeping Services for Grant Writing Consultants

Years of engagement letters, submission confirmations and decision letters reconciled, so each fee finally sits in the year it was earned.

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US Corporation & LLC Tax Filing for Grant Writing Consultants

Filing on both sides of the border when a United States foundation engages you, or a shareholder lives there, with withholding and foreign property reporting handled.

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Voluntary Disclosure Program for Grant Writing Consultants

Come forward on fees reported in the wrong year, or tax never charged to a charity client, and cancel penalties through a Voluntary Disclosures Program application.

Accounting & Tax Services Tailored for Grant Writing Consultants

Genuine practitioner depth for independent proposal writers, funding consultants working with charities and non-profit organisations, and small practices running a pipeline of applications for foundation, municipal and institutional funders. The whole file turns on one date, and we fix it on evidence.

  • The T2 is prepared with GIFI across Schedule 100 and Schedule 125, and every success fee is reported in whichever fiscal year the funder’s decision gave you an enforceable right to it, never the year the drafting happened to end.
  • Paragraph 12(1)(b) of the Income Tax Act brings amounts receivable for services rendered into income whether or not they have actually been received, and the question that provision asks is whether a legal entitlement exists, not whether the file is closed.
  • Profit from your business is computed on an accrual basis under section 9 of the Income Tax Act, which practitioners read as bill what you have finished; on a conditional engagement the finished work generates no entitlement and so generates no income to report.
  • Schedule 8 carries the allowance class by class: Class 50 at 55% for laptops, monitors and tablets, Class 8 at 20% for desks and shelving, Class 12 at 100% for proposal, reference and research software.
  • Sell or trade a workstation above its undepreciated capital cost and subsection 13(1) recaptures the surplus into that year’s income, which is what catches a consultant replacing every machine in the office at once.
  • We set the ledger up so that an application which has been filed and not yet decided cannot drift into accounts receivable, because an entry sitting there asserts a right to be paid that does not yet exist in law.
  • Each engagement carries its own fee structure in the books, whether a flat amount, a staged amount tied to submission, a fee conditional on approval, or some combination of the three billed on one invoice.
  • The funder’s dated award or decline letter is filed against the engagement it belongs to, because that one document is what proves your recognition date to a lender, to CRA or to anybody else who later asks about it.
  • What has to survive the retention period set by section 230 of the Income Tax Act is, on this file, four documents: the engagement letter stating the fee condition, the submission confirmation, the funder’s written decision, and the invoice raised against it.
  • Monthly reconciliation runs in QuickBooks Online or Xero with Dext capturing the paperwork, so database subscriptions, purchased research and submission costs stop being reconstructed from memory in the week before a return is due.
  • A researcher, an editor or a proposal coordinator is either on your payroll or in business alone, and which one is settled by how the work was really organised rather than by what an invoice says. We document each.
  • We take income tax, CPP and EI off the payroll and get the money to CRA against the PD7A by its due date, because miss that date and the penalty escalates in bands, topping out at 10%.
  • WSIB coverage is registered before your first hire, and that applies to an editor working from a kitchen table in another city as much as to anyone who ever attends a client meeting alongside you.
  • The T4 slips and the T4 Summary are filed before February closes; a writer genuinely in business on their own account receives a T4A in place of that, and the fee belongs in box 048 and nowhere else on it.
  • Ontario employer health tax begins once payroll clears the $1,000,000 exemption, which a practice reaches only well after it has stopped being one person and a laptop, but the line still has to be watched as you hire.
  • Grant writing and proposal consulting are taxable supplies, so 13% attaches to your fee in Ontario; we file on that footing under the Excise Tax Act and claim the input tax credits sitting inside the costs that produced it.
  • A registered charity or non-profit client does not change that. Whatever exemptions attach to the supplies the organisation itself makes, the consulting supply you make to it is taxable, and the tax on it is yours to collect and remit.
  • Registration becomes compulsory once taxable supplies exceed $30,000 over four consecutive calendar quarters, and a consultant who has invoiced charities tax-free for years has usually crossed that line long before anybody thought to look.
  • The Excise Tax Act asks when you made a supply, a different question from when income is recognised for tax, so the two dates on one conditional fee can fall apart and we reconcile both rather than assume.
  • Input tax credits sitting in funder database subscriptions, purchased research, software licences, professional fees and the business share of your connectivity get claimed on every return rather than on whichever ones somebody remembered.
  • A flat fee, a staged fee and a fee conditional on approval are not three prices for one service. They are three recognition dates, and the planning has to follow whichever of them your engagement letter has actually created.
  • Where several decisions are expected to land close together, we look at whether the engagements can honestly be sequenced and documented so that a whole year of fee income does not arrive inside one fiscal period by accident.
  • A non-refundable retainer taken before any work begins is a different question entirely: amounts received ahead of the service are governed by provisions this page does not deal with, and we keep them on their own line.
  • The home office deduction for an unincorporated consultant is restricted by subsection 18(12) of the Income Tax Act, and we calculate it against the actual space and the actual costs instead of claiming a round percentage and hoping.
  • Owner compensation and the eventual sale of the practice are planned years ahead, because the $1.25M lifetime capital gains exemption under section 110.6 rewards a share structure settled early and punishes one assembled in a hurry.
  • We rebuild the unfiled years from the engagement letters and the funders’ decision letters, because establishing the year in which each fee first became receivable changes the reported income of every single year in the backlog.
  • A T2 filed late attracts a penalty computed on the balance owing, with a further charge added for every complete month of delay, and that compounding is why the earliest open year is always cleared first.
  • Where tax was never charged on invoices to charity and non-profit clients across several years, that exposure gets quantified before anything is filed, because the figure usually dwarfs the income tax owing over the same period.
  • The pools for capital cost allowance are rebuilt one missing year at a time, and whatever sat in a single undifferentiated equipment account is resolved into Class 50, Class 8 and Class 12 before anything is filed.
  • Where a previous adviser recognised fees on submission instead of on approval, some years come out overstated and others understated, and the correction has to run through all of them in one consistent pass rather than year by year.
  • When CRA asks why a fee was reported in one year rather than the one before it, we produce the engagement letter carrying the condition, the submission record, and the funder’s dated written decision that created the entitlement.
  • An assessment raised under subsection 152(7) of the Income Tax Act does not have to rest on what a taxpayer provided, which is simply what the provision says, and it is the position you occupy when nothing on the file explains a recognition date.
  • On a review of your charity invoicing we show which supplies carried 13%, which clients were asked for it, and when the practice changed, because a corrected position applied consistently closes the question considerably faster than argument.
  • Where CRA challenges whether a subcontracted researcher was self-employed, we put together the written agreement, the pattern of work and what the parties in fact did, so one year under review does not open up the years behind it.
  • An objection goes in inside the statutory window, and where penalties and interest followed an honest error rather than indifference we apply for taxpayer relief on Form RC4288 at the same time rather than months afterwards.
  • We prepare compilation engagement financial statements for the lender or the leasing company, covering the two fiscal years a credit decision on a consultancy of this size will normally reach back across before it is made.
  • Earned fees and the pipeline of filed but undecided applications are presented so a reader can tell them apart, because a practice with six live submissions is not the same business as one with none.
  • Amounts receivable are stated only where an enforceable right existed at the balance sheet date, and the basis on which that judgment was reached is disclosed rather than left for the reader to infer from the numbers alone.
  • The doubtful-debt reserve and the write-off appear as the two separate items they are, so that nobody reading the statements is told twice that a single approved fee has gone bad on the same client in the same period.
  • Statements are turned around inside thirty days of complete records, which is what matters when a funder’s own payment cycle has left you short and an operating facility has to be arranged at some speed.
  • Where the practice retains more than its owner draws out, the roughly 12.2% Ontario rate on the first $500,000 of active business income does real work; where it does not, incorporating mainly buys you a second return to file.
  • Existing engagements, goodwill and equipment transfer in under section 85 of the Income Tax Act, elected on Form T2057, which is the difference between a deferred transfer and a disposition at fair market value nobody planned or budgeted for.
  • Opening capital cost allowance pools are set from that transfer, with Class 50, Class 8 and Class 12 established separately on the first day instead of merged into one equipment account to be unpicked three years later.
  • The company’s Business Number is opened alongside its HST and payroll accounts immediately, so whoever holds the engagement letter is also the entity invoicing, collecting and reporting on it.
  • The chart of accounts is built from the outset to hold conditional fees apart from earned ones, which costs a great deal less than the reconstruction that follows three years of treating the two as though they were identical.
  • We rebuild neglected books from bank records, issued invoices, engagement letters and the funders’ decision correspondence, because nothing can be filed until each fee has a document establishing the year it became receivable.
  • Every engagement in the backlog is tested against its own fee condition first, since a conditional fee posted in the year its application went in is the one error that makes an otherwise caught-up ledger worth nothing at all.
  • A single catch-all equipment account gets broken back out, across the caught-up years, into its Class 50, Class 8 and Class 12 components, which is how a consulting practice’s fixed asset ledger very nearly always arrives here.
  • Invoices issued to charity and non-profit clients are reviewed for the tax that should have been charged on them, so the catch-up produces a correct HST position rather than a tidy and confidently wrong one.
  • Unentered subscription, research, software and professional costs across a two-year backlog usually hold enough input tax credits to pay for a meaningful part of the catch-up engagement before any income tax is even considered.
  • Where you write applications for American foundations, or a United States non-profit engages your practice directly, we review where the service is performed and how the fee is taxed before the first invoice ever leaves your office.
  • Dividends leaving Canada for a non-resident shareholder carry Part XIII tax at 25% where no treaty cuts the rate, and the withholding itself together with its NR4 slip each has a deadline of its own to meet.
  • Once the cost of specified foreign property goes above $100,000 it belongs on Form T1135, and what gets penalised is lateness of the form, which happens in a nil-tax year exactly as readily as in any other.
  • A single US-citizen or green-card shareholder is enough to pull American filing duties into a Canadian corporation, and from that point the two countries’ returns have to be planned as one job rather than two.
  • Foreign tax credits only work where both returns have been reconciled against one another, and that reconciliation is where double taxation on one and the same consulting fee actually gets removed instead of merely complained about.
  • Where fees were reported in the year an application was filed instead of the year it was approved, the correction reaches every open year at once, and coming forward beats waiting for the reassessment.
  • Form RC199 goes in as the taxpayer agreement, carrying a reconstruction drawn from engagement letters, funders’ written decisions and the bank record, so that each corrected year rests on documents rather than on an estimate.
  • The application is only valid where it is made before CRA has reached you, and that single ordering is the whole difference between a correction you are controlling and an enforcement action you are merely responding to.
  • Tax never charged on invoices to registered charities, conditional fees never picked up in any year at all, and research costs claimed in the wrong period are all correctable through the same submission at the same time.
  • One consultant who had recognised every fee on submission for three running years corrected all of them in a single disclosure, and the penalties that would otherwise have attached to those years were cancelled outright.

Grant Writing Fee & Recognition Check

Six questions on your fee conditions, your recognition date, your charity invoicing, your record of funders’ decisions, your HST registration and whether incorporating is the right move. No fee shown.

1. Does your engagement letter say exactly what makes each success fee payable?

2. Is a conditional fee kept out of income until the funder has decided?

3. Do you keep the dated award or decline letter with the engagement file?

4. Do you charge 13% HST on fees billed to charity and non-profit clients?

5. Are your taxable supplies measured against the $30,000 threshold quarterly?

6. Is your grant writing practice incorporated?

Free CPA Consultation for Grant Writing Consultants

Case Studies: Grant Writing Accounting & Tax

Thunder Bay Grant Writing Consultant — The Year Every Fee Was Booked on Filing

The problem: A Thunder Bay consultant raised no invoice until a funder had decided, but recorded every success fee as revenue on the day the application was submitted. Eleven applications went in during one fiscal year and five were refused outright. The refused fees had already been taxed, two approvals that landed after the year-end had not been picked up at all, and the corporation had paid tax on income it never held a right to receive.

What we did: We read each engagement letter to establish what actually made the fee payable, matched every application to its dated award or decline letter, reversed the amounts that had never been receivable, and moved the approved fees into the years in which the decisions genuinely fell.

The result:

  • Fees recognised on entitlement rather than on submission
  • Two fiscal years restated to the funders’ decision dates
  • Refused applications now carrying no income at all

Sault Ste. Marie Grant Writing Consultant — The Charity Invoices With No Tax On Them

The problem: A Sault Ste. Marie practice worked almost entirely for registered charities and small non-profit organisations and had never charged tax on a single invoice to any of them, on the understanding that the client’s status carried across to the supplier. Taxable supplies had passed the threshold three years earlier. Nothing had been registered, nothing had been collected, and most of those clients could have recovered a good part of it.

What we did: We quantified the uncharged tax across the open periods, registered the practice with the correct effective date, rebuilt the input tax credits that had never been claimed against that exposure, and rewrote the engagement letter and invoice template so every supply now carries 13%.

The result:

  • Registration effective date corrected and periods filed
  • Unclaimed input tax credits recovered against the exposure
  • Charity invoicing now on a documented, consistent basis

Timmins Grant Writing Consultant — The Approved Fee That Never Arrived

The problem: A Timmins consultant’s largest client had a major capital application approved, which made the success fee receivable and taxable in that year on the ordinary rule. The client then restructured and paid nothing. The bookkeeper wrote the whole amount off immediately while collection was still being actively pursued, and then claimed a reserve against the same fee in the following year as well.

What we did: We unpicked the two claims. For the stretch where recovery had turned doubtful but the debt was not yet dead, the paragraph 20(1)(l) reserve was the entry; the paragraph 20(1)(p) deduction waited until the fee was genuinely unrecoverable, and the reserve then came back into that year’s income.

The result:

  • Reserve and write-off claimed in the correct years
  • Collection correspondence filed against each claim
  • No deduction taken twice on one approved fee

Our Simple Process

How We Work With Grant Writing Consultants

Know Exact Fees within 2 Minutes NOW

A fixed order of work, visible end to end, so there is never a week in which you are unsure what we hold, what we are doing with it or when you will next hear from us.

Here’s a simplified process approach:
Step 1

Kickoff (Document Request)

Collect prior T2 returns, every engagement letter with its fee condition, submission confirmations, award and decline letters, invoices raised, subcontractor agreements, payroll records and bank statements.

Step 2

First 30 Days (Cleanup & Setup)

Establish the recognition date on every open and recent engagement, take filed-but-undecided applications out of receivables, set the chart of accounts, and rebuild the Class 50, 8 and 12 pools.

Step 3

Monthly Close

Fees recognised on entitlement, conditional applications tracked outside revenue, 13% charged on every client invoice including charities, HST filed and tied to the ledger, payroll agreed to the PD7A.

Step 4

Quarterly Planning Review

Decisions expected over the next two quarters, the small business limit, owner compensation, exposure on an approved fee nobody is paying, and whether the practice has outgrown the structure it sits in.

Step 5

Year-End Close & T2 Filing

Trial balance, statements separating earned fees from the live pipeline, reserve and write-off kept apart, every recognition date supported by a decision letter, and the T2 filed with GIFI.

Get Your Grant Writing Taxes Done Right Today

Transparent Pricing for Grant Writing Consultants

Affordable Pricing for Grant Writing Consultants

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 Grant Writing Accountant

The same two people handle your file from the first engagement letter through to the filed return, year after year, so there is never a question about who you should be calling.

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 reviews, left by owners of consultancies, independent professional practices and small service firms across Ontario and the rest of Canada.

Serving Grant Writing Consultants Across Ontario

Our CPA team works with grant writing and funding consultants throughout Ontario. We know why a finished application is not yet a receivable, what has to be on the file to support the year you reported a success fee in, and what CRA asks for when it decides to look at one.

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)

Grant Writing Accounting & Tax FAQs

Should I incorporate my grant writing practice?
Incorporation puts a liability barrier between you and the practice and it changes the rate, but on a file this size the deciding question is how much of the fee income stays inside the company. Where the profit stays inside the company, the roughly 12.2% Ontario rate applying to a corporation’s first $500,000 of active business income buys a real deferral. Where every dollar is drawn out to live on, you have added a return and a set of filings for very little. A personal rate reaching 53.53% at the top sounds decisive and frequently is not, because the comparison only bites on the money you leave behind. A corporation with engagement-level records showing which fees were earned and which applications remain open is also a business a lender can assess, and a sole proprietorship almost never has them.
When does a success fee that depends on approval become income?
When the funder decides in your client’s favour, not when you file the application. Section 9 of the Income Tax Act computes profit from a business, and paragraph 12(1)(b) brings into income amounts receivable in respect of services rendered in the course of that business, whether or not they have actually been received in the year. Everything turns on the word receivable, and receivable means you hold an enforceable legal right to be paid. Where the engagement letter makes the fee payable only on approval, that right does not exist while the decision is pending, however complete the work. The corollary is the part consultants miss: the moment approval lands, the full amount is income in that fiscal year whether or not you have raised an invoice.
I finished the proposal months ago. Why is it not income yet?
Because accrual is not the same thing as billing what you have finished, and that is the most common misunderstanding on this file. Accrual asks when you obtained the right to be paid. It does not ask when you stopped working. A consultant who has researched, drafted, revised and submitted a complete application has rendered the service in full, but where the fee was made conditional on the funder approving it, the right to payment has not yet arisen. There is no amount receivable to bring into income under paragraph 12(1)(b) of the Income Tax Act. This runs the opposite way from a business paid up front for work it still owes, and the opposite way again from a profession taxed on time it has not yet billed. Borrowing either answer produces the wrong year.
Must I charge HST when the client is a registered charity?
Yes, and this is the assumption that costs grant writing consultants the most money, so it is worth being precise about why. A registered charity or a non-profit organisation may well make supplies of its own that are exempt, and its funders and donors may treat it accordingly. None of that attaches to you. What you supply is consulting, supplied in Ontario, and that is a taxable supply: 13% attaches to your fee under the Excise Tax Act whoever the recipient turns out to be. Registration is required once your taxable supplies exceed $30,000 over four consecutive calendar quarters, and a consultant working almost exclusively for charities has usually crossed that line long before anyone checked. Most of these clients could have recovered a substantial part of the tax, so the cost of never charging it falls on you.
Is the grant money my client receives my revenue?
No, and the separation has to be clean in your books. The funding is awarded to your client, paid to your client and accounted for by your client. Your revenue is your fee, and nothing else should ever appear on your income statement in connection with the award. How assistance received is treated in the recipient’s hands is a real question with real provisions behind it, but it is your client’s question and the answer belongs on their return. Where you have passed funds along on a client’s behalf, that money is not yours either, and it has to be visible as a flow-through rather than buried inside revenue. A consultancy whose top line has been inflated by awards it merely helped obtain presents to a lender, and to CRA, as a much larger business than the one that exists.
What records prove which year a fee belongs to?
Three documents, and they are not interchangeable. The engagement letter, which has to state plainly what makes the fee payable, because that sentence is the whole legal test. The submission confirmation, which shows the service was in fact rendered. And the funder’s dated written decision, which creates the entitlement and therefore fixes the year. Your books and records belong to you for six years, that being what section 230 of the Income Tax Act insists on, and here the funders’ letters outrank everything else in that pile. We have reviewed practices where every application was tracked meticulously in a spreadsheet and not one award letter had been kept. Subsection 152(7) permits an assessment that does not rest on what the taxpayer reported, and a recognition date with no paper standing behind it cannot be defended.
What happens if an approved fee is never paid?
Two claims exist here, they do not arise at the same moment, and treating them as one entry is the reliable way to get this wrong. Once approval made the fee receivable it was income, and that does not reverse because the client later refuses to pay. Paragraph 20(1)(l) of the Income Tax Act permits a reserve for as long as the debt lives on and its recovery has turned doubtful, and the figure is reconsidered annually in the light of what is then known. When the fee finally becomes uncollectible the correct entry is a different one, the paragraph 20(1)(p) deduction, and whatever reserve you had been carrying is added back to income in the year you take it. The two errors we see are writing the fee off while still chasing it, and holding a reserve long after the client has gone.
Can I deduct the hours I spent on an application that was refused?
Yes, and they are not a special case. Paragraph 18(1)(a) of the Income Tax Act permits a deduction for an outlay or expense made for the purpose of gaining or producing income from the business, and that purpose test is satisfied by work undertaken to win a fee whether or not the fee ever materialised. Research database subscriptions, the reports you bought, the hours of a subcontracted researcher, the submission costs and the proportion of your software and connectivity used on the bid are ordinary costs of the business. What paragraph 18(1)(h) excludes is personal and living expenses, an entirely different thing and not a comment on whether a bid succeeded. A practice with a one-in-three approval rate is running the cost base of a business that bids.
Can I claim a home office?
For an unincorporated practice the gate is subsection 18(12) of the Income Tax Act, and it is a narrower gate than most consultants expect. Either the room is where the business principally operates from, or it is given over wholly to earning business income and used on a regular and continuous footing to see clients in. There is no third branch, and a corner of a room you also sleep in fails the exclusivity test. Even where the conditions are met, the deduction cannot create or increase a loss for the year; the excess is carried forward against future income from the same business instead. For a practice working almost entirely from one room the principal place of business branch usually applies, and it is worth computing against the real area and the real costs rather than claiming a round percentage.
Do I issue a slip to a researcher or writer I subcontract?
Where the person is genuinely self-employed and you paid them for services, yes: the amount goes on a T4A with the fee reported in box 048. The slip itself is the easy part. The question that actually matters is whether the person is self-employed at all, and that is decided on how the relationship really operated rather than on what an invoice calls it. A researcher who works only for you, to your schedule, using your subscriptions and your templates, may well be an employee however the arrangement was described, and getting that wrong runs to source deductions, employer contributions, WSIB coverage and penalties on all of it. We document each role before the slips are prepared.
How is an upfront fee handled alongside a success fee?
As two different amounts with two different recognition dates, on one invoice if you like, but never as a single figure in the books. The success fee is the subject of this page: it becomes receivable when the funder’s decision creates the right to it. A non-refundable retainer taken before any work begins is the opposite situation, money in hand for a service you still owe, and it is governed by provisions this page does not deal with, so we keep it on its own line. Neither is recognised merely because an invoice went out of the door. We set them up on separate accounts from the start, with the advance released as the work is performed and the conditional amount held outside revenue until a decision arrives.
Why is my revenue so different from the funding I have helped win?
Because the funding was never yours, and the gap between the two figures is the whole shape of this business. A consultant who has helped clients secure several million dollars of funding may be running a practice with a few hundred thousand dollars of fee revenue, and that is the correct picture rather than a disappointing one. What counts for CRA, for a lender and for section 125 of the Income Tax Act, which sets the limit on small-business-rate income, is your own active business income: what you earned, not what you helped somebody else to obtain. Two failures show up here: describing the funding won as though it were scale, and under-reporting because conditional fees sat in an unreconciled pipeline.
How do I claim the equipment a writing practice actually buys?
A grant writing practice is light on capital, and it is better to claim the little there is correctly than to pretend otherwise. Laptops, monitors and tablets go into Class 50 and attract capital cost allowance at 55%. Desks, chairs, shelving and filing go into Class 8 at 20%. Software, meaning the proposal and collaboration tools, the reference manager and the design licence you use to build the submission package, goes into Class 12 at 100%. A vehicle used in the business sits in Class 10 at 30% where it is not a passenger vehicle caught by the separate ceiling. Sell or trade an asset above its undepreciated capital cost and subsection 13(1) of the Income Tax Act pulls the surplus back into that year of income. Everything else here is a current expense.

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Grant Writing Accounting & Tax Done Right.

Success fees recognised in the year the funder’s decision created an enforceable right to them under paragraph 12(1)(b) of the Income Tax Act, filed-but-undecided applications kept out of receivables, 13% charged under the Excise Tax Act on every client invoice including those billed to a registered charity, the paragraph 20(1)(l) reserve kept apart from the paragraph 20(1)(p) write-off, research and submission costs on losing bids claimed under paragraph 18(1)(a), and the T2 filed with laptops in Class 50 at 55%, furniture in Class 8 at 20% and software in Class 12 at 100%. AFFORDABLE flat fees, no hourly billing. Licensed CPA Ontario. 1300+ five-star reviews. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee.



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