Questions
What do people ask before they call?
These are the real ones, answered at the length they deserve rather than in a line. Two of them are uncomfortable and they are still here. The last four are for the accountants and the estate lawyers, who arrive with a different worry entirely.
Before the call
In the order people actually raise them: what happens, what it costs, whether this is a sale, whether your accountant is being replaced, whether he is a CPA, and where the licences are held.
We will ask what the corporation looks like, what coverage is already in place and who put it there, and what it is you have been quietly turning over. Most of it is questions. None of it is a presentation.
At the end we tell you whether there is anything worth a longer look. Sometimes there is not, and we say so on the call rather than booking a second one to get there. There is no pitch on the first conversation.
The first conversation costs nothing and there is no version of it that turns into an invoice. If it goes further and we build out statements and an estate projection for you, we tell you the fee before we start, in writing, and you agree to it before any work begins.
You keep the analysis whatever you decide to do afterwards, including deciding to do nothing, and including taking it to somebody else to implement. It is your file. It was always going to be your file.
Insurance is one of the tools, and yes, we are licensed and we are paid when a policy is placed. You should know that going in, and anybody who does not tell you that on the first page is telling you something else instead.
What that buys you is a reason to be blunt about the rest of it. Structure comes first and product comes last, and on plenty of files the honest answer is that the coverage you already own is fine and the thing worth changing is somewhere else entirely. We would rather say that in fifteen minutes than take six meetings to arrive at selling you a tenth thing.
No, and we are fairly firm about it. Your accountant owns the returns, the elections, the year end and the CRA correspondence, and whether a structure is right for your file at all. Your lawyer owns the documents. We own the coverage and the funding. Thirty-six years of tax work means we can read your accountant's file without them having to translate it, and that is the whole benefit. It is not a licence to do their job, and we don't.
If your accountant wants to be on the call, bring them. The work is better when they are in it. Either way the analysis goes to you in writing so they can check every line of it against the return they filed, which is the only way any of this should be arriving on their desk.
No. Prabhjit Virk is not a Canadian CPA, does not hold himself out as one, and does not file your return. That is worth saying in the answer rather than leaving it to the small print at the bottom of the page, because it is the thing you actually want to know.
What is licensed here is life insurance, in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, and nothing beyond it. The accounting background is a separate matter from the licence and it is not permission to do your accountant's job. Thirty-six years of reading corporate returns, fourteen of them working as an accountant in Canada before the licence existed, is what makes it possible to follow your file without your accountant having to translate it. That is the whole of the claim being made.
British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. Quebec is pending. Most clients are in the Lower Mainland, but a physician who moves to Calgary or a dentist who opens a second practice in Ontario does not have to start again with somebody new.
Worth saying plainly, because it changes the arithmetic on this whole site: nearly every provincial figure we publish is a British Columbia figure. The corporate rates, the dividend rates, the top personal bracket and the probate rules are all different in Alberta and in Ontario. We would run yours rather than these.
For accountants and estate planning lawyers
You are not reading this for yourself, are you?
Somebody sent you a link and you are here to work out whether your client is safe on the other end of it. That is the right instinct and it is the question we would be asking as well. Most of what gets written for this audience answers a different question, which is why it never lands.
So these four are the ones that actually decide it. What comes back to you. Where your work stops and ours starts. What we would look at first on a corporate file, so you can judge whether the analysis is any good before you risk a relationship on it. And whether any of this needs a meeting in your diary at all.
The client, and a written analysis you can check. We take the insurance piece and nothing else, and if something on the file turns out to be properly your work it goes to you, including work we could technically have kept. The relationship does not get quietly reorganised while you are not in the room.
That is not generosity, it is arithmetic. Referrals go both ways or they stop coming, and a practice this size cannot afford to be the reason somebody stopped sending them.
You own the numbers and the filings: the corporate and personal returns, the elections, the year end, the CRA correspondence, the capital dividend account balance and the adjusted cost basis, and the judgement about whether a structure suits the file. A lawyer owns the documents, the drafting and the independent advice. We own what the policy says, how it is sized and owned, which pocket pays the premium, and the liquidity that funds the plan on the day.
The overlap is narrower than it looks and we treat it that way. Every position we put forward gets written down with the sections it rests on, so you can disagree with it on paper rather than having to unpick it after a client has already signed something.
You can answer nearly all of it faster than we can. The capital dividend account balance, which is nil on most of the corporations we see, not because it should be but because nobody was tracking it. The adjusted cost basis on any existing corporately-owned policy, because it moves both the credit and the taxable portion. Adjusted aggregate investment income against the $50,000 threshold, since above it the business limit comes off at five dollars for every dollar over and it is gone by $150,000.
Then the beneficiary designations, which is the least technical item on the list and the one that has gone wrong most often. A designation naming the estate, or one that was never updated after a divorce, does not do the job the rest of the plan assumes it is doing.
Yes. Send us a file with the client's name taken off and we will come back in writing. Plenty of these start that way and never need a meeting at all, and it costs you nothing to find out whether there is anything on it worth a conversation.
If a meeting does make sense, it moves to your schedule rather than ours. For an accountant that means nothing between February and the end of April unless you want it. For an estate planning lawyer it usually means us joining a client meeting already in your calendar rather than asking for a separate one.
If it is your own corporation
Fifteen minutes, and no pitch on it.
Nothing to send in advance and nothing to prepare. We ask what the corporation looks like and what is already in place, and at the end we tell you whether there is anything worth a longer look. Sometimes there is not, and you get told that on the call.
If it is a client's
Send the file with the name off it.
No meeting, no calendar, nothing in your diary. We come back in writing with the sections each position rests on, so you can disagree with it on paper rather than unpicking it after somebody has signed something. Plenty of these never need a conversation at all.
Still not the right question on the list? The office number is (604) 537-5444, and the contact page has a box to type into.