Personal Finance

Filing taxes with side income - accountant needed?

  • Last Updated:
  • Jan 15th, 2014 9:09 pm
Tags:
None
Sr. Member
Jun 16, 2008
975 posts
1077 upvotes

Filing taxes with side income - accountant needed?

For the past few years, I've been filing my taxes online with uFile and have not had any problems. My tax return has always been quite simple - full-time income with RSP deductions, which resulted in a nice refund :) .

This year is quite a bit different though. In addition to my full-time employment:

- I'm a photographer in my spare time, and I have received about $2000 from selling photos and shooting events in 2013
- I have about $2600 (camera) + $2700 (computer) + $200 (frames/prints/incidentals) = $5500 camera-related expenses incurred in 2013
- I own a condo and use a section of it as my home office, where I work on my photography (I understand I can claim this as an expense)
- I have begun contributing to my office's RSP plan, so my contributions have come directly off my paycheques

My question is, do you think I could handle this more complex tax return on my own through uFile? Is uFile suitable for my situation? Or should I suck it up and hire an accountant this year?

Thanks for your help,
3 replies
Deal Addict
Aug 19, 2013
2397 posts
1091 upvotes
You can not deduct the entire cost of your camera, computer, etc. they are considered assets and you would claim what is called CCA. Basically you get a % of what you paid each year. Also if you have any supplies (frames etc) that have not been used yet, you can't deduct them. They would be considered inventory.

You could claim business use of home but you must be reasonable in what you deduct. Also you can not create a loss with use of home expenses.

Take a read through some of the business guides on the CRA and if things make sense to you, you could file the return yourself. If you get confused then go to a tax preparer. But your statement of business income would be very straight forward.
Newbie
Jun 9, 2013
16 posts
4 upvotes
I would get a tax preparer that will show you what and how to do the business deductions. It will be easy for you to do your own taxes after that. I don't recommend anyone use UFile though. StudioTax is free and you can still do small business income.
Deal Addict
User avatar
Dec 8, 2010
2564 posts
992 upvotes
Yeah, just figure out what you can depreciate vs what is an expense, fill in the lines, easy. The rules are pretty straight forward. Note you only deduct a proportion of the condo-as-office based on how much you used it. So if you have a full time job and did 10 days work *at home* you'd basically not even bother claiming it, IMHO. You can't count all the time you work if you're working out on a job (taking the photos!), just the time you're sat in your office working.

Computers depreciate quickly though, so that's good!

No need to worry about HST til you hit 30k.

Top

Thread Information

There is currently 1 user viewing this thread. (0 members and 1 guest)