On Mon. Jan. 1, the ability of small business owners to sprinkle income among family members was greatly curtailed. Draft legislation introduced last month proposes to extend the current “kiddie tax” anti-income sprinkling rules to a spouse or partner as well as to adult children who are not “actively engaged on a regular, continuous and substantial basis in the activities of the business.”
While there are some limited exceptions to the new rule (e.g. a spouse of a business owner over age 65 or related adults of non-professional corporations who meet certain share-ownership criteria), for the most part, income splitting via a private corporation is dead.
That being said, with top marginal tax rates for high-income earners over 50 per cent in more than half the provinces in 2018, there are still a bunch of perfectly legal income-splitting strategies you may want to consider for this tax year.
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