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Gondaliya CPA

Technology Tax Filing Experts

Tax Accountant for Healthtech Companies in Ontario and Across Canada

Every healthtech founder we meet assumes the product is an exempt health care service under Part II of Schedule V to the Excise Tax Act. That assumption is usually wrong, and if it were right it would be bad news: an exempt supplier cannot claim input tax credits, so the tax on your developers, your cloud bill and your whole software stack becomes a permanent cost instead of a refund. In practice software licensed to a clinic is generally taxable, which is the better answer — but it has to be established, not assumed. Then there is SR&ED, where healthtech has two problems other software companies do not: grants that reduce the claim under ITA subsection 127(11.1), and clinical validation that usually is not the eligible part. AFFORDABLE flat fees, and the credits claimed while the company still needs the cash.

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AFFORDABLE Tax Accountant for Healthtech Companies

Healthtech sits in the gap between two kinds of accountant. The ones who know healthcare know practices and practitioners, not product companies. The ones who know software have never had to work out whether a supply is an exempt health care service — the question that decides whether your input tax credits exist at all. At Gondaliya CPA we do the work that gap leaves undone: the supply characterisation settled and documented, the credits claimed while you are still pre-revenue, and an SR&ED claim that survives contact with a technical reviewer. AFFORDABLE flat-fee support, no hourly billing.

We work with clinical software companies, patient portals and telehealth platforms, remote monitoring and medical device software companies, electronic records and practice management vendors, health data analytics teams, and pre-revenue startups running their first hospital pilot. If you build physical devices, our page for hardware startups covers the manufacturing side; if you run infrastructure or managed IT rather than a health product, see our cloud service providers and managed service providers pages.

Three lines we draw plainly. We will not tell you on a web page whether your product is exempt or taxable — it turns on your actual supply and your actual supplier. We state no SR&ED credit rate and no expenditure limit, because those are specific and a claim built on a number from a website unravels at review. And we give no advice on device classification, regulatory pathway or clinical strategy; that is not accounting work.

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Accounting That Understands the Exemption Question

Four things make healthtech different from every other software file, and a preparer who treats you as an ordinary SaaS company will get at least two of them wrong. At Gondaliya CPA we set them out plainly and say which questions are matters of fact rather than rules.

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Exempt or Taxable

Part II of Schedule V exempts certain health care services. Being inside it is bad news — an exempt supplier claims no input tax credits at all.

💰

Credits Are Your Cash

Pre-revenue, the input tax credit on contractors, cloud and software is often the only money arriving from anywhere other than your investors.

🔬

Grants Cut the Claim

ITA subsection 127(11.1) reduces qualified expenditures by assistance received, and healthtech takes more grants and hospital funding than most sectors.

📋

Validation Is Not SR&ED

Resolving a technological uncertainty qualifies. Running a trial to confirm the product works is usually data collection, and that is excluded.

Stay Compliant While You Are Still Burning Cash

The exposure on a healthtech file is rarely the income, because for years there is not much. It is the sales tax characterisation, the credits you did or did not claim, and an SR&ED claim nobody documented while the work was happening.

📋

Four Lines We Draw, and Why

First, we do not characterise your supply on a web page. Whether a product is an exempt health care service turns on what it is and who supplies it, so we work it out on your facts. Second, we state no SR&ED rate or expenditure limit — those are specific and we will not have a claim built on a figure from a website. Third, we give no advice on device class, licence pathway or regulatory timeline; that is regulatory work and we are not regulatory consultants. Fourth, we state no foreign rule: nothing on the FDA, nothing on the EU MDR, no United States sales tax test.

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Your CRA and GST/HST Obligations

We manage your corporation’s T2 with the small business deduction under ITA section 125 against the $500,000 limit, the SR&ED pool under ITA section 37 and credits under ITA section 127, GST/HST registration once worldwide taxable supplies exceed $30,000 in a quarter or over four consecutive calendar quarters, place of supply rules setting the rate by your customer’s province with Ontario at 13%, exports generally zero-rated under Schedule VI Part V of the Excise Tax Act, input tax credits apportioned where supplies are mixed, business-use-of-home under ITA subsection 18(12), instalments, Form T1135 where specified foreign property exceeds $100,000, and the six years of records ITA section 230 requires.

📊

The Two Records We Ask You to Keep

Only two, and both have to be kept as the work happens. The first is the SR&ED project record: what was technically uncertain, what you tried, what failed and why. Written in the week it happened it carries a technical review; assembled the month before filing it reads like a sales document, and reviewers know the difference. The second is the supply and contract file — what you actually supply, to whom, and on what terms — because that is the evidence behind your exempt-or-taxable position and your input tax credit claims, and it is the first thing a sales tax auditor asks to see.

Accounting & Tax Experts for Healthtech Companies

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Why Choose Our Accounting Services for Healthtech Companies?

1
⚖

Tax Planning — The Supply First

We settle exempt against taxable before anything else, because that one answer decides whether your input tax credits exist and whether you have been charging tax correctly all along.

2
🔬

Consulting — The SR&ED Record

We set up the project record in the first month, because it only works kept contemporaneously and cannot be reconstructed convincingly once the build has moved on.

3
🛡

CRA Representation — Technical Review

When a claim goes to technical review or a characterisation is challenged, we produce the records and the analysis and handle the correspondence from the first letter.

4
📝

Bookkeeping — Diligence-Ready

Deferred revenue, recurring revenue and burn kept correctly month by month, so a funding round is never held up while someone rebuilds two years of books.

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ACTIVELY ACCEPTING
Healthtech Clients
Includes personal T1 filing for you and your family
Pre-Revenue or Scaling
Weekend and evening support until 9 PM
Always Within Reach
Just a call away when you need us

Healthtech Tax and Accounting Services in Ontario

📄

Corporate Tax Filing

Your T2 with the small business deduction applied properly, non-capital losses carried forward, and instalments set only once the tax owing actually justifies them.

⚖

Exempt or Taxable Supply Review

Whether your product is an exempt health care service under Part II of Schedule V or a taxable supply, settled on your facts and documented when we adopt it.

💰

Input Tax Credits and Apportionment

Credits claimed on the costs that carried tax, and apportioned on a documented basis where the company makes both exempt and taxable supplies.

🔬

SR&ED Claims

The ITA section 37 pool and ITA section 127 credits, built from contemporaneous project records rather than a narrative assembled the month before filing.

🏦

Grants and Assistance Review

How provincial health innovation funding, hospital partnership payments and accelerator money reduce your claim under ITA subsection 127(11.1).

📑

Regulatory Spend Treatment

Whether Health Canada licensing and quality system costs are current or capital against ITA paragraph 18(1)(b), and where Class 14.1 applies.

📊

Revenue and Deferred Revenue

Annual licences earned across the period they cover, setup fees separated from subscription, and pilot agreements treated on what they actually are.

🏥

Hospital and Public Sector Sales

Why a supply to a hospital is still taxable, and a working capital model built around procurement cycles that run months rather than weeks.

🌍

Registration and Place of Supply

When you crossed $30,000, the rate by your customer’s province, zero-rated exports, and whether the simplified non-resident regime reaches you.

👤

Payroll for Developers

Source deductions from the first hire, the contractor-versus-employee question answered honestly, and time records that support the SR&ED claim.

🏢

Structure and Funding Rounds

Salary against dividends for founders, year end chosen deliberately, and the statements a diligence team will ask for prepared before they ask.

🛡

CRA Audit Resolution

Expert support on SR&ED technical reviews, input tax credit examinations and characterisation challenges, handled with confidence from the first letter.

Accounting & Tax Services Tailored for Healthtech Companies

Real, practitioner-level CPA expertise for clinical software companies, patient portals and telehealth platforms, remote monitoring and medical device software, records and practice management vendors, health data analytics teams, and pre-revenue startups running a first hospital pilot.

  • We prepare your corporation’s T2 with the small business deduction under ITA section 125 applied against the $500,000 limit, tracked across any associated corporations a founder has left over from a previous venture.
  • We carry non-capital losses forward properly, which matters more here than almost anywhere else, because a healthtech company usually spends three or four years in loss before the first real revenue arrives.
  • We set instalments once the tax owing justifies them, and not before, since a company burning investor cash should not be paying instalments on profit it has not yet earned.
  • We claim business-use-of-home under ITA subsection 18(12) where founders are still working from home, limited to the income from the business with the excess carried forward rather than lost.
  • We keep the six years of records ITA section 230 requires, and we keep them in the shape an acquirer’s diligence team will ask for, because that request arrives with no notice.
  • Part II of Schedule V to the Excise Tax Act exempts certain health care services, and almost every founder we meet assumes their product is inside it. That assumption is usually both wrong and unwelcome.
  • Unwelcome because being exempt is bad news. An exempt supplier cannot claim input tax credits, so the tax on your developers, your cloud bill and your software stack becomes a permanent cost.
  • The exemptions turn on both what the supply is and who makes it: an institutional health care service by a facility, or a diagnostic or treatment service rendered to an individual by a listed practitioner.
  • A licence of software to a clinic is generally none of those, which means it is a taxable supply and your credits are available. That is the right answer for most healthtech, and it is worth real money.
  • We will not tell you on a web page which side your product falls on, because it turns on your actual supply and your actual supplier. We work it out, write down the reasoning, and keep it on file.
  • For a pre-revenue healthtech company the input tax credit is often the only cash coming in from anywhere other than investors, so getting the registration and the claims right is a cash-flow question first.
  • We register voluntarily before the $30,000 threshold where it pays to, which on a company with a large taxable cost base and little revenue it almost always does.
  • We claim the credits on the costs that actually carried tax: Canadian contractors, cloud and hosting, software subscriptions, office and equipment, and the professional fees that come with a funding round.
  • Where the company makes both exempt and taxable supplies, the credits are apportioned to the extent the inputs are used in commercial activity, on a fair and reasonable basis applied the same way every period.
  • We document the apportionment method when we adopt it rather than reconstructing it under review, because a percentage nobody can account for is the first thing a sales tax auditor takes apart.
  • Qualifying work goes into the expenditure pool under ITA section 37 and generates investment tax credits under ITA section 127, refundable at an enhanced rate for a Canadian-controlled private corporation up to its expenditure limit.
  • We state no rate and no limit on this page. Those figures move, they are specific, and a claim built from a number someone read on a website is the kind that unravels at the technical review.
  • The eligible work is the systematic investigation that resolved a technological uncertainty. Not the feature you shipped, not the clinical trial that confirmed it worked, and not the data you collected along the way.
  • That distinction is where nearly every first healthtech claim we review goes wrong, because clinical validation feels like the hardest part of the project and is usually the part that does not qualify.
  • So we set up contemporaneous records while the work happens: what was uncertain, what was tried, what failed and why. You can model the arithmetic yourself with our SR&ED calculator first.
  • This is the healthtech-specific trap. ITA subsection 127(11.1) reduces your qualified expenditures by government and non-government assistance received or entitled to be received, and healthtech takes more assistance than most sectors.
  • Provincial health innovation funding, a hospital partnership payment, accelerator money, a university collaboration grant — each one has to be tested against the agreement to see whether it reduces the claim.
  • A company that claimed the full expenditure and ignored a grant it had already banked gets the reduction applied on review, with the credit clawed back in a year when the cash is long spent.
  • We read the funding agreements before the claim rather than after, and we model the net benefit of taking a particular grant against the credit it will cost you, which is a conversation worth having early.
  • We also keep the claim and the grant reporting consistent with each other, because the same project described two different ways in two different submissions is how a technical review starts badly.
  • Software as a medical device brings a Health Canada class determination, a device licence and a quality management system, and every one of those costs money before a single dollar of revenue arrives.
  • The accounting question nobody asks is whether that spend is deductible now. ITA paragraph 18(1)(b) bars a deduction for a capital outlay, and a licence with enduring value looks a lot like one.
  • Where the expenditure is capital and the asset is an eligible intangible, it generally falls into Class 14.1 and is written off over time rather than claimed in the year the cheque cleared.
  • We make that call deliberately and on the facts, separating ongoing compliance cost — which is ordinary and current — from the one-off spend that bought an approval the company will hold for years.
  • What we do not do is tell you your device class, your licence pathway or your regulatory timeline. That is a regulatory question, we are not regulatory consultants, and we will say so plainly.
  • An annual licence invoiced in January is not January’s revenue. It is earned across the twelve months it covers, with the unearned balance carried as deferred revenue rather than taken to income on invoicing.
  • This matters beyond tidiness. A healthtech company that books annual contracts on signature looks profitable in the quarter it closes a deal and broke in the three that follow, which misleads its own board.
  • Implementation and setup fees are separated from the subscription rather than lumped in, because they are earned when the work is done and they distort the recurring revenue figure investors actually look at.
  • Pilot agreements get their own treatment. A paid pilot is revenue; an unpaid one that may convert is not, and a letter of intent from a hospital is neither revenue nor a contract however encouraging it reads.
  • We keep usage-based billing reconciled to the underlying meter rather than to the invoice run, so a billing error does not quietly become a revenue error that nobody finds until diligence.
  • Here is the thing founders get backwards: the customer’s status does not exempt the supply. Selling to a public hospital or a provincial health authority does not make a taxable supply exempt.
  • Only the nature of what you supply can do that, so a platform licensed to a hospital is generally taxable even though everything around the transaction feels like the public health system.
  • The second public-sector problem is timing. Procurement cycles run months, purchase orders arrive before contracts, and payment lands long after the revenue was earned and the tax on it became payable.
  • We build the working capital model around that gap rather than discovering it, because a company that recognises revenue on delivery and collects in ninety days needs to have planned for the ninety days.
  • We also treat your data residency and privacy compliance spend as the ordinary deductible operating cost it is, while being clear that whether you are compliant is a question for your counsel and not for us.
  • Registration is required once worldwide taxable supplies exceed $30,000 in a single calendar quarter or over four consecutive calendar quarters, and exempt supplies do not count toward that figure while zero-rated ones do.
  • Canadian sales carry the rate for the customer’s province under the place of supply rules, with Ontario at 13%, which for software licensed across the country means several rates in the same month.
  • Supplies to customers outside Canada are generally zero-rated under Schedule VI Part V of the Excise Tax Act, so no tax is charged while the supply still counts as taxable for your credits.
  • If the company is a non-resident supplying Canadian consumers, the simplified registration regime may reach you, and our registration checker will tell you whether it does before you call us.
  • We flag where separate provincial registrations can arise in Quebec, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba rather than describing those regimes here, and we state no foreign sales tax rule at all.
  • We set up payroll properly from the first hire, with source deductions remitted on the right schedule, because a new employer that is days late rather than months late still collects a penalty.
  • We work through the contractor-versus-employee question honestly rather than labelling every developer a contractor for convenience, because a wrong call there is assessed against the company with interest and penalties.
  • That question is sharper in healthtech than elsewhere, because the same person is often a part-time clinical adviser, a contractor on the build and a shareholder, all in one relationship.
  • We keep the payroll records SR&ED needs, which means time allocated to eligible work as it happens rather than an estimate assembled in the week before the claim is filed.
  • We handle the reporting that comes with a stock option or share plan, and we prepare the T4 and T4A slips on time, including for the contractors working outside Canada.
  • Most healthtech is incorporated from the start because investors require it, so the useful work is not whether to incorporate but getting the structure right before anyone puts money in.
  • We model salary against dividends for the founders, including the effect on RRSP room and on whether anyone is building the income record a mortgage lender will want to see.
  • We flag where a holding company or a share reorganisation is worth considering, and where it is premature, and we are plain that the legal work belongs to your corporate counsel rather than to us.
  • We choose a fiscal year end deliberately, which for a company planning a raise is a real lever: closing the year before or after a round changes what the statements in the data room show.
  • And we prepare the statements diligence will actually ask for, with a compilation engagement where that is the right level, so a raise is not held up while someone rebuilds two years of books.
  • When the CRA questions your exempt-or-taxable characterisation, we produce the analysis of the actual supply and the contracts behind it, which is exactly why we write that reasoning down when we adopt it.
  • When your input tax credits or your apportionment method are reviewed, we produce the invoices showing which costs carried tax and the documented basis on which the split was made.
  • When an SR&ED claim goes to technical review, we produce the contemporaneous project records and we handle the correspondence, including the awkward part where some of the claim was clinical validation.
  • When a grant is raised against the claim, we produce the funding agreement and the ITA subsection 127(11.1) analysis rather than arguing about it, which is a shorter and cheaper conversation.
  • We file the Notice of Objection within 90 days of a reassessment and pursue taxpayer relief on Form RC4288, cancelling penalties and interest where a prior preparer’s error was the cause.

Healthtech Tax Check

Six quick questions on your supply characterisation, your input tax credits, your SR&ED records, your grants, your deferred revenue and your diligence readiness. No fee shown.

1. Has anyone settled in writing whether your supply is exempt or taxable?

2. Are you claiming input tax credits on contractors, cloud and software?

3. Do you record SR&ED project work as it happens rather than before filing?

4. Have your grants been tested against your SR&ED claim?

5. Is annual contract revenue deferred across the period it covers?

6. Could you hand an investor two clean years of statements this week?

Free CPA Consultation for Healthtech Companies

Case Studies: Healthtech Companies

Toronto Clinical Software — Three Years of Unclaimed Credits

The problem: A Toronto company licensing scheduling and charting software to clinics had never registered for GST/HST. A previous adviser had told the founders that because they sold into healthcare their supplies were exempt, so they charged no tax and claimed nothing back. They had spent three years paying HST on Canadian contractors, cloud hosting and a full software stack, and had recovered none of it.

What we did: We worked through the actual supply against Part II of Schedule V and concluded a licence of software to a clinic was not an exempt health care service. We registered them from the correct date, quantified and dealt with the period in which tax should have been charged, and claimed the input tax credits available on the open periods, with the reasoning documented on file.

The result:

  • Characterisation settled in writing, not assumed
  • Input tax credits recovered for the open periods
  • Registration corrected from the proper effective date

Waterloo Remote Monitoring — A Grant Nobody Mentioned

The problem: A remote patient monitoring company had filed two SR&ED claims prepared by a contingency-fee firm. Neither claim mentioned the provincial health innovation funding and hospital partnership payments the company had received across the same periods. The claims had been paid, the cash had been spent on payroll, and a review had just opened on the second year.

What we did: We read the funding agreements, applied ITA subsection 127(11.1) to work out which payments were assistance and by how much they reduced the qualified expenditures, and put a corrected position forward ourselves rather than waiting to be told. We then rebuilt the project records so the third claim separated the systematic investigation from the clinical validation work.

The result:

  • Assistance reduction quantified and disclosed proactively
  • Third claim filed with validation work properly excluded
  • Contemporaneous project records in place from that quarter

Ottawa Telehealth Platform — Revenue That Was Not Revenue Yet

The problem: An Ottawa telehealth company had booked three multi-year hospital contracts in full in the month each was signed, and had treated a signed letter of intent as revenue as well. Its statements showed a profitable year followed by two terrible quarters for no commercial reason. A funding round was in progress and the investor’s diligence team had started asking questions the founders could not answer.

What we did: We restated the contracts so each was earned across the period it covered with the unearned balance carried as deferred revenue, removed the letter of intent entirely, separated implementation fees from subscription, and rebuilt two years of monthly statements with recurring revenue and burn shown separately.

The result:

  • Multi-year contracts deferred across their actual terms
  • Recurring revenue and implementation fees shown separately
  • Two years of statements rebuilt in time for the data room

Our Simple Process

How We Work With Healthtech 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)

Collect your customer contracts and terms, every funding and grant agreement, prior returns and SR&ED claims, payroll and contractor records, and your GST/HST registration details.

Step 2

First 30 Days (Two Records)

Settle the exempt-or-taxable characterisation in writing and start the contemporaneous SR&ED project record, then reconstruct any input tax credits still available.

Step 3

Position Review

Grants tested against ITA subsection 127(11.1), regulatory spend split between capital and current, registration date confirmed, and deferred revenue restated.

Step 4

Annual Planning Review

Structure and year end, salary against dividends, loss carryforwards, SR&ED cash flow timing, and the statements your next round will need.

Step 5

Year-End Close & Filing

T2 with the small business deduction, the SR&ED claim filed with its records, credits claimed and apportioned, instalments set, CRA correspondence handled.

Get Your Healthtech Tax Position Reviewed Today

Transparent Pricing for Healthtech Companies

Affordable Pricing for Healthtech 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 Accountant

Meet your lead accountant. As your business and technology tax adviser, you deal with the same two people every year.

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

1300+ five-star reviews from healthtech companies, software businesses and technology startups across Ontario and Canada.

Serving Healthtech Companies Across Ontario

Our CPA team provides specialized accounting and tax solutions for healthtech companies across Ontario. We understand why the exempt-or-taxable question under Part II of Schedule V decides whether your input tax credits exist at all, why being exempt is bad news rather than good, why ITA subsection 127(11.1) means a health innovation grant can quietly reduce your SR&ED claim, and why clinical validation is usually not the part of the project that qualifies.

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North York (ON)

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Healthtech Accounting & Tax FAQs

Is my healthtech product exempt from HST?
Probably not, and that is good news rather than bad. Part II of Schedule V to the Excise Tax Act exempts certain health care services, and the exemptions turn on both what the supply is and who makes it — an institutional health care service supplied by a health care facility, or a consultative, diagnostic, treatment or other health care service rendered to an individual by one of the practitioners the legislation names. A licence of software to a clinic is generally none of those. Founders hope to be exempt because exemption sounds like relief, but for a product company it is the worse outcome: an exempt supplier makes no taxable supplies and therefore cannot claim input tax credits, so the HST on your developers, cloud and software becomes a permanent cost. We will not characterise your product on a web page, because it depends on your actual supply and your actual supplier. We settle it on your facts and keep the reasoning on file.
Can I claim input tax credits as a healthtech company?
If your supplies are taxable, yes — and for a pre-revenue company this is often the only cash arriving from anywhere other than investors. The credits sit on the costs that actually carried GST/HST: Canadian contractors and agencies, cloud and hosting, software subscriptions, equipment, office costs and the professional fees around a funding round. Two points matter. First, you can register voluntarily before crossing $30,000, and on a company with a large taxable cost base and almost no revenue that is usually worth doing immediately rather than waiting. Second, a foreign supplier generally charges you no GST/HST, so the share of your stack bought from outside Canada produces no credit — which is worth knowing before you build a cash forecast around a refund. We work out the real recoverable figure rather than the hoped-for one, and we go back and claim what is still available on the open periods.
What if I make both exempt and taxable supplies?
Then you apportion, and the method matters as much as the arithmetic. Input tax credits are available to the extent an input is acquired for consumption or use in a commercial activity, so where a company makes some exempt and some taxable supplies the credits on shared inputs — the cloud bill, the office, the engineering team — have to be split on a fair and reasonable basis. Hybrid healthtech businesses run into this more than pure software companies: a company that licenses a platform and also employs practitioners delivering a service directly to patients can genuinely be on both sides of the line at once. The practical rule is to choose a method, document why it is reasonable, and apply it the same way every period. A round percentage nobody can account for is the first thing a sales tax auditor takes apart, and a method that changes whenever it suits the result is worse than a slightly imperfect one applied consistently.
Should I register for GST/HST before I have revenue?
Usually yes, and earlier than most founders expect. Registration is mandatory once worldwide taxable supplies exceed $30,000 in a single calendar quarter or over four consecutive calendar quarters, but you may register voluntarily before that if you are making or will make taxable supplies. For a healthtech company the voluntary route is often clearly worth it, because you are spending heavily on inputs that carry HST while invoicing almost nothing — so registering turns a cost into a refund. Two cautions. Exempt supplies do not count toward the threshold and generate no credits, so if your characterisation is genuinely exempt, registering achieves nothing. And zero-rated export sales do count toward the threshold even though no tax is charged on them, which catches companies selling mostly to United States customers who assumed the threshold did not apply. We model it on your actual cost base before registering, not after.
Can I claim SR&ED on clinical software?
Often yes, but not for the part of the project you are proudest of. Qualifying expenditures go into the pool under ITA section 37 and generate investment tax credits under ITA section 127, refundable at an enhanced rate for a Canadian-controlled private corporation up to its expenditure limit — we state no rate and no limit here, because those are specific and a claim built on a figure from a website is the kind that unravels at technical review. What qualifies is the systematic investigation that resolved a genuine technological uncertainty: the algorithm that did not work, the architecture problem with no known solution, the integration nobody could make reliable. What does not qualify is routine development, data collection, quality control and, usually, clinical validation. Running a trial to confirm a product works is confirmation, not investigation. That distinction is where nearly every first healthtech claim we review goes wrong.
Does a grant reduce my SR&ED claim?
Frequently, and this is the trap healthtech falls into more than any other sector. ITA subsection 127(11.1) reduces qualified expenditures by government and non-government assistance received or entitled to be received in respect of the expenditure. Healthtech companies take more of that than most: provincial health innovation funding, hospital partnership payments, university collaboration money, accelerator cheques. Each one has to be read against its agreement to see whether it is assistance and, if so, how much it reduces. The failure mode is painful: a company claims the full expenditure, the credit is paid, the cash goes on payroll, and two years later a review applies the reduction and claws it back in a year when there is nothing to claw it from. So we read the funding agreements before the claim rather than after, and where you are choosing whether to take a particular grant, we model the net benefit against the credit it will cost.
Are Health Canada licensing and regulatory costs deductible?
Some of them, now — and the rest over time, which is the distinction nobody makes. Ongoing regulatory compliance is an ordinary operating cost and currently deductible. But ITA paragraph 18(1)(b) bars the deduction of a capital outlay, and spending that secures an approval the company will hold for years looks a great deal like capital. Where it is capital and the asset is an eligible intangible, it generally falls into Class 14.1 and is written off over time rather than claimed in the year the cheque cleared. So a device licence application, the clinical and documentation work done to support it, and a quality management system build each have to be looked at on their own facts rather than swept into professional fees. What we will not do is tell you your device class, your licence pathway or your timeline. That is a regulatory question, we are not regulatory consultants, and you should use one.
Do I charge HST when I sell to a hospital?
Generally yes, and this is the single most common thing founders have backwards. The customer’s status does not exempt the supply. Selling to a public hospital, a provincial health authority, a university or any other public-sector body does not convert a taxable supply into an exempt one — only the nature of what you supply can do that. So a platform licensed to a hospital is normally a taxable supply even though every part of the transaction feels like the public health system, and a company that issued years of invoices without tax on the assumption that hospitals are exempt has a problem to fix rather than a position to defend. Certain public bodies may be entitled to rebates on tax they pay, but that is their claim, not your exemption, and it does not change what you were required to charge. We settle this at the start and fix it where it has already gone wrong.
How do I recognise revenue on an annual licence?
Across the period it covers, not in the month you invoiced it. An annual licence billed in January is earned over twelve months, with the unearned balance sitting as deferred revenue on the balance sheet until it is. This is not bookkeeping fussiness — it is the difference between statements that describe your business and statements that mislead your own board. A company that books multi-year hospital contracts in full on signature shows a wonderful quarter followed by terrible ones for no commercial reason, and the first person hurt by that is the founder trying to plan from it. Three related points. Implementation and setup fees are earned when the work is done and should be shown separately, because they distort the recurring revenue figure investors actually care about. A paid pilot is revenue; an unpaid pilot is not. And a letter of intent from a hospital is neither revenue nor a contract, however encouraging it reads.
Can I deduct cloud, hosting and software subscriptions?
Yes, where they are used to earn business income, and for a healthtech company they are usually the largest cost line after people. Monthly cloud, hosting, monitoring, data storage and the development and security tooling a team runs on are ordinary operating expenses, deductible when incurred. Two refinements worth knowing. Where a cost is incurred to build something with enduring value rather than to run the business day to day, it may be capital rather than current, and the line between configuring a platform and developing an asset is one we draw deliberately rather than by default. And on the sales tax side, a Canadian supplier charges you GST/HST you can generally recover as an input tax credit if your supplies are taxable, while a foreign supplier typically charges none — so the recoverable share of your stack is smaller than the total, and in some cases the imported supply rules can run the other way.
How should I pay my developers?
Correctly, which is not always the same as conveniently. The contractor-versus-employee question is decided on the real working relationship — control, tools, financial risk, integration into the business — and not on what the agreement calls the person or on what both sides would prefer. Labelling a full-time developer a contractor because it is simpler is the error we see most, and it is assessed against the company, with interest and penalties, not against the worker. Healthtech makes this harder than most sectors because the same individual is often three things at once: a part-time clinical adviser, a contractor on the build and a shareholder. We work through it honestly and tell you when the answer is employee. There is also an SR&ED reason to get payroll right: a claim needs time allocated to eligible work as it happens, and an estimate assembled the week before filing is exactly what a reviewer discounts.
When should I incorporate, and what do investors need?
Most healthtech is incorporated from the start because investors require it, so the real question is not whether but whether the structure is right before money comes in. Incorporation brings the small business deduction under ITA section 125 against the $500,000 limit, the ability to retain earnings at corporate rates, and the share structure a raise needs. We model salary against dividends for the founders, including the effect on RRSP room and on the income record a mortgage lender will want to see — which matters more than founders expect when they have been paying themselves nothing for three years. We also choose the fiscal year end deliberately, because closing the year before or after a round changes what the statements in the data room show. What investors ask for is consistent: two clean years, deferred revenue handled properly, recurring revenue separated from one-off fees, and a defensible SR&ED position. We prepare those before the diligence request arrives.
What do you actually do, and what do you not do?
We are Ontario CPAs. We prepare and file your corporation’s T2 with the small business deduction and the loss carryforwards, settle the exempt-or-taxable characterisation on your facts and document it, claim and apportion your input tax credits, build and file the SR&ED claim from contemporaneous records under ITA sections 37 and 127, test your grants against ITA subsection 127(11.1), split regulatory spend between capital and current, restate deferred revenue, set up payroll and handle the contractor question, model structure and year end for a funding round, and deal with CRA correspondence, technical reviews, objections and relief applications. What we do not do: we characterise no supply on a web page; we state no SR&ED rate or expenditure limit; we give no advice on device classification, regulatory pathway, clinical strategy or privacy-law compliance; we state no foreign tax or regulatory rule; and we quote no fee beyond our published pricing.

Related Industries We Serve

Accountant for Digital Platforms

  • Intermediary rather than product
  • Agent against principal on tax
  • Part XX platform reporting

Accountant for Hardware Startups

  • Physical device manufacture
  • Inventory and tooling costs
  • Prototype and production runs

Accountant for Cloud Service Providers

  • Infrastructure and hosting margin
  • No health exemption question
  • Usage-based billing records

Accountant for Managed Service Providers

  • Ongoing IT service delivery
  • Contracted support agreements
  • Service rather than product

Healthtech Tax Done Right.

Built for the company sitting between healthcare and software, where neither kind of accountant has done the work. The exempt-or-taxable question under Part II of Schedule V settled on your actual supply and written down — because being exempt is bad news, not good, and an exempt supplier claims no input tax credits at all. Those credits claimed while you are still pre-revenue, apportioned on a documented basis where your supplies are mixed. An SR&ED claim under ITA sections 37 and 127 built from contemporaneous records, with the systematic investigation separated from the clinical validation that usually does not qualify, and your grants tested against ITA subsection 127(11.1) before the claim rather than after. Plus regulatory spend split properly against ITA paragraph 18(1)(b), deferred revenue restated, and the statements a diligence team will ask for ready before they ask. AFFORDABLE flat fees, no hourly billing. Licensed CPA Ontario. 1300+ five-star reviews. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee.



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