Our office has extensive expertise designing estate planning structures that optimize tax planning, put your capital and business assets to their most efficient long-term use, and stay fully compliant with the Canadian Income Tax Act.
For business owners who hold shares of a private corporation, death triggers one of the most punishing tax events in the Income Tax Act — and without careful planning, it can happen more than once on the very same dollar of value.
Estate planning re-engineers your corporate and personal holdings ahead of time: identifying the strategies available to your estate, sequencing them correctly, and documenting every step so your executor and beneficiaries aren't left guessing when it matters most.
Every estate plan we design moves through three stages.
We start by fully mapping where things stand today, including:
You can't minimize the tax on an estate you haven't fully mapped first.
Your plan is built as a fully documented package, including:
Every strategy is matched to your specific facts — not applied as a one-size-fits-all template.
Your diagnostic gives you the plan. We support your family through carrying it out:
Your family shouldn't have to translate a technical memo into action while grieving.
Without planning, the same dollar of value inside your corporation can be taxed more than once before it ever reaches your family.
When a shareholder passes away, the Income Tax Act can tax the value of a private corporation's shares in layers — first at death, again when the money is paid out to your beneficiaries, and potentially a third time when the corporation itself sells the property behind that value. Here's how it happens:
You're deemed to have sold your shares at fair market value immediately before death. If those shares have appreciated, that deemed disposition can trigger a significant capital gain — reported on your final personal tax return, even though no shares actually changed hands.
Your beneficiaries inherit the shares, but the value is often still sitting inside the corporation. When that value is extracted — through a wind-up, a sale, or a payout — it's frequently taxed again, this time as a dividend to your beneficiaries.
If the corporation sells tangible or depreciable property — real estate, equipment, goodwill — to generate the cash needed to pay your beneficiaries, that sale can trigger its own layer of corporate-level tax: a third bite before your family ever sees the money.
Left unplanned, a single estate can face capital gains tax, dividend tax, and corporate tax on the same underlying value — before a dollar reaches the next generation.
Depending on your facts, we use one of these strategies — or a combination of all three — to reduce or eliminate the extra layers of tax.
Uses a newly formed holding company to acquire your estate's shares at their stepped-up cost base, then extracts the corporation's retained value as a return of capital rather than a taxable dividend — eliminating the second layer of tax on the same gain.
Allows your estate to redeem shares within the first taxation year after death and carry the resulting capital loss back to offset the capital gain reported on your final (terminal) return — reducing or eliminating tax at the personal level.
Increases the tax cost of the corporation's underlying assets to reflect the price paid for the shares, reducing the corporate-level tax triggered when those assets are eventually sold — addressing the third layer directly.
Often, the right answer isn't just one of these — it's a coordinated combination, sequenced together as part of a single plan.
A well-designed estate plan pays off in more than one way.
Most estates realize more than one of these benefits from a single, well-timed plan.
If any of these describe your situation, your estate is worth a second look — while there's still time to act.
Your quarterly review flags the exposure.
Estate planning is how you close it.
A fixed, one-time engagement — not an open-ended bill.
Your preliminary estate plan includes a full cost-benefit analysis — your projected tax savings measured directly against the $30,000 investment — so you know the payback before you commit.
Without a coordinated plan in place, families often face:
These costs compound quickly and can't be undone after death. Estate planning stops them while there's still time to act.
Clients choose our estate planning service because we provide:
This is not a generic will-and-powers-of-attorney checklist.
This is a tax-minimization plan engineered for your estate.
