Since we are privileged to have a close and long-running relationship with our clients, we often are asked to help out with matters that are far from a typical “accounting or taxation” problem. In general terms we call this business advisory services. It can take the form of:

• “what do you think we should do about…”
• “should we be leasing or buying that new…”
• “the bank has just renewed our lines of credit and is now asking for…”
• “we were thinking of expanding into…, what do you think?”
• “our costs of… are always going up, what can we do?”

You name it, in 33 years of helping clients in their businesses, we have been asked just about everything! We will so our best to assist with any business decision making that you might be facing.

Either of these events is a watershed moment in your business career. It is important to know that you have an ethical, innovative and loyal professional in your corner to help you make the best decisions.

Buying and selling a business often takes many months to close, but can also come up suddenly. We work closely with your legal counsel, and other consultants that may be involved, for a successful outcome.

You can rely on us during this time of high stress to guide you through the process.

The existing corporate structure of your business can become outdated as it develops, grows and changes. You don’t want your business or family circumstance to surpass your current corporate structure.

We have the tax and business expertise to advise you about how to move your corporate structure to the next level.

Working with the trusted professionals at Scarrow Yurman & Co and your legal counsel, you’ll be well able to structure your business to handle the economic, industry, and compliance demands of tomorrow.

Sometimes a financial institution will require a cash flow projection to support a request for financing. We have the right tools in place to prepare this type of reporting for you.

We start by understanding your business plans and your financial performance metrics. Next, we create a report that is useful to the lender and also to you.

We often find that clients start these projects to satisfy the requirements of a lender, but end up seeing the true value to themselves and want to continue the projections.

We tailor our level of financial reporting services to meet your needs. Whether it’s a full Audit Report, or a Review Engagement, or a less labour-intensive Notice to Reader Engagement, our goal is to add real value to your business and support your decision making.

Audit Report

You may require an Audit Report because of:

• requirements from certain types of funding from a government agency
• a government regulation
• the current or requested levels of bank financing
• the terms of a shareholder agreement
• a business is to be sold in the foreseeable future

The provision of Audit Services is the hallmark of the public accounting profession and the C.A. designation—capitalizing on a strong sense of professional ethics, hard work and vigilance. The Audit process is a labour-intensive and hence expensive exercise.

But Scarrow Yurman & Co has a system in place to remove as much of the stress on you as possible, make the end product useful for our client’s decision-making needs, and contain costs to competitive levels. We can meet your needs whether you have a balance sheet of more than $200M and or less than $200K.

Review Engagement Report

If you require some level of assurance on your financial statements, but not a full audit, we often perform a Review Engagement. This level of assurance is sufficient for:

• moderate levels of bank financing (generally under $2M)
• bonding arrangements for contractors
• purchase and sale transactions
• multiple shareholder ownership arrangements

Many of our clients ask us to perform the Review Engagement even when they have no external requirement to provide this type of financial statement but simply because they value the additional depth of analysis. Here our focus is on the financial performance and on adding some insight into where opportunities exist or problems lurk.

While not as arduous as an audit, the Review Engagement still requires an inquisitive approach to our work, and a lot of person-to-person contact so that we can know enough about your business to provide the insights you need.

Notice to Reader Engagement

Many businesses do not require any level of assurance on their financial statements to the users of this information. For this type of engagement we perform a Notice to Reader Engagement. In this type of work we don’t get into the detailed work that the assurance engagements involve.

Smaller businesses are often asking for this type of financial statement because it satisfies the income tax filing requirements for corporations, partnerships and professionals and is less expensive.

People have different objectives for their estate and beneficiaries but tax minimization is often the biggest area of concern.

We can create a logical and coherent estate plan in concert with your legal counsel and your investment advisors.

Once things are well organized, you can rest easy knowing that this important area of planning has a solid action plan.

Do you see yourself travelling, golfing, sailing, spoiling your grandchildren, taking music lessons, enjoying your well-deserved break? For most of us, this type of retirement calls for careful planning and ongoing monitoring.

Whether you have already started saving or not, preparing for your retirement is much more than simply saving money. Finances, life events and the economy are all variables that fluctuate regularly and can impact your retirement planning.

At Scarrow Yurman & Co. we not only help you with your initial plan for retirement, but we will review your situation each year to ensure you are working your plan AND that your plan is still working for you!

Why not give us a call today and let’s start planning your future – together!

These tax credits support Canadian innovation and may apply to businesses who improve a process, product, material or device. Since they were introduced, we have helped many clients with their claims.

Although the program is complicated, the SR&ED tax credit helps keep more cash in your business and can be very advantageous for you. Our clients typically handle their own technical writing or hire a technical consultant for this and we handle the number crunching. We work for an hourly rate, not on a contingent fee basis as do many other accounting firms. We’re here to maximize your tax credit options.

Many family business owners hope that their business can be transitioned to another family member. Based on our experience this is one of the most difficult things to do. Statistics gathered by industry and government support this.

Scarrow Yurman & Co has an edge in helping clients in this area because we have strong personal relationships with the family, having served as both accounting and tax advisors on a personal and corporate basis. Well before any transition takes place, we can help both parties be realistic and set some critical success factors.

Everyone wants to minimize the taxes they pay.

Corporate tax services

That’s why we typically prepare the corporate tax returns along with a year-end financial statement engagement. We want to be sure that you:

• take advantage of any allowable deductions
• avoid any penalties for late filing
• minimize interest charges from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)
• ensure that the taxable income is determined correctly

There are many differences between the accounting income showing on your financial statements and the taxable income on your tax return that affects the taxes owing. We electronically file all corporate tax returns to speed up processing when you are owed a tax refund. We encourage you to take advantage of corporate direct deposit to improve the security surrounding tax refunds.

Personal tax services

Almost all of the shareholders of our corporate clients are personal tax clients too. We also prepare personal tax returns for self-employed professionals in many lines of work, executives with complex tax filing requirements, all client family members, and other individuals who have special tax filing needs.

It is important that we prepare the tax returns for the whole family so that all the available credits and tax incentives can be maximized. If you call us with a question our technology allows us to retrieve information on your tax file easily and immediately—including access to all your tax reporting slips and other supporting documents you sent to us.

When possible, we e-file personal tax returns to speed up your tax refund. We encourage you to have us enroll you for direct deposit so that CRA refund cheques are deposited directly into your bank account. This improves security and provides faster access to the funds!

Advocating for clients with Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)

At some point CRA may come knocking—looking for back-up information to support your personal or corporate tax filing position. This can be a simple request for information or a full-scale audit.

We have the expertise to help you through what many find to be a nerve-wracking experience. You need professionals who have your best interests at heart and who have an in-depth knowledge of the ever-changing tax laws as to what tax rules apply and don’t apply. In the case of a full blown tax audit, careful management of the process is important so that things don’t go “off the rails.” Managing the CRA auditor appropriately is as important as the discussion on detailed tax law.

For 33 years we have advocated strongly on behalf of our clients with CRA—while maintaining a professional reputation with them.