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HEALTHY HOMES RENOVATION TAX CREDIT

Eligibility

• You are 65 years or older
• OR you are living with a person age 65 or older

 Eligible Expenses

• certain renovations to permit a first-floor occupancy or secondary suite for a senior
• grab bars and related reinforcements around the toilet, tub and shower
• handrails in corridors
• wheelchair ramps, stair/wheelchair lifts and elevators
• walk-in bathtubs
• wheel-in showers
• widening passage doors
• lowering existing counters/cupboards
• installing adjustable counters/cupboards
• light switches and electrical outlets placed in accessible locations
• door locks that are easy to operate
• lever handles on doors and taps, instead of knobs
• pull-out shelves under counter to enable work from a seated position
• non-slip flooring in the bathroom
• a hand-held shower on an adjustable rod or high-low mounting brackets
• additional light fixtures throughout the home and exterior entrances
• swing clear hinges on doors to widen doorways
• creation of knee space under the basin to enable use from a seated position (and insulation of any hot-water pipes)
• relocation of tap to front or side for easier access
• hands-free taps
• motion-activated lighting
• touch-and-release drawers and cupboards
• automatic garage door openers
• Non-slip flooring in bathrooms and kitchens
• Installing a hand-held shower
• Door locks that are easy to operate

How much do you get?

15% of eligible expenses up to a maximum of $1,500 per year.

How do you get it?

• You must keep your renovation receipts.
• Claim it on your personal income tax return.

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PENNIES NOW GO TO HEAVEN

Just think…our kids and grand kids will look at us strange when we say things like “Pennies from Heaven” or “A penny for your thoughts”.

So what are we business people supposed to do?

When a client buys from you and the sale includes pennies….

            If the customer pays with cash

·         And has exact change…take it. 
·         Does not have exact change…round it (see below for details)

If customer pays with cheque, debit or credit card

·         Collect the exact amount including pennies

How to Round…

If bill ends with $.01 or $.02 – round down ↓ to $.00

If bill ends in $.03 or $.04 – round up ↑ to $.05

If bill ends in $.06 or $.07 – round down ↓ to $.05

If bill ends in $.08 or $.09 – round up ↑ to $.10

What to do with all your pennies…
Deposit it to the bank.

They will forward them to the Canadian Mint where they will be destroyed.

Believe it or not, it expected to take six (6) years to get the pennies out of circulation.

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8 Financial New Year's Resolutions for Small Business Owners

Make these New Year's Resolutions about your Business Financing for 2012

By Rosemary Peavler, About.com Guide

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Small business owners face many financial management challenges as they operate their businesses. It's the beginning of a New Year and most small business owners are making their New Year's Resolutions about their businesses. Here's what you should promise to do about your finance operations in 2012!

1. I promise to better manage my cash flow. Cash flow is the life blood of any business. Even if you show a profit on your income or profit and loss statement, it doesn't matter if you don't have enough cash flow to pay your monthly bills. Your firm will fail if you focus only on profit at the expense of cash flow. Many individuals new to business have to learn this the hard way - by running short on cash. It takes cash to pay your suppliers, meet your payroll every week, and outfit your office. Prepare a cash budget at least monthly and a Statement of Cash Flows along with your other financial statements. It will make running your company so much easier and will help maximize your profit in the end. Cash management is crucial for all firm operations.
   
2. I promise to prepare a business budget at the beginning of every budgeting period, stick to it to the extent possible, and change it with thoughtfulness when need be. The budget for your company is your plan of action. Determine what you want your planning period to be and determine what your budget should be for that period. Your first step should be to put together a budget worksheet with entries for both the income you expect to receive and the expenses you expect to incur during the budgetary period.
   It is always a good idea to establish your budget worksheet upfront and, even if your firm does not receive income from every source or have every type of possible expense each planning period, have a line item for it just in case. Any deviations that you have to make from your worksheet should be reflected in your next budget planning period.
   
3. I promise to focus on ways to increase my sales revenue during 2012. If you don't accept credit cards, now may be the time to start. If you don't have an online sales presence, you may need to investigate the possibility of establishing that presence. Anything, within reason, that you can do to reach your customer base that will pump up your sales revenue may help increase your profit and cash flow during 2012.
   
4. I promise to better monitor my customer's credit accounts during 2012. If you have made the decision to offer credit to your customers, then you have to keep an eye on how your customers keep up with their payments. Preparing and monitoring an aging schedule of your accounts receivable will allow you to do that.
   
5. I promise to keep better track of my inventory during 2012. Inventory is the least liquid current asset that your company has. In order to get rid of it, you have to find a buyer, which isn't always easy. You want to hold the least amount of inventory that you can to satisfy the demands of your customers without stocking out. There are costs to holding too much inventory and those are costs you want to minimize. Many small businesses do not keep a close enough eye on the amount of inventory on their shelves and end up cutting into their profits because of it.
   Generally, about 80% of your sales are generated by 20% of your inventory investment. The rest of your inventory may be dead or slow-moving inventory. Resolve, in 2010, to go through your inventory and make more of it productive and less obsolete. Use the inventory turnover ratio to help you make that determination.
   
6. I promise to focus on setting a reasonable price for the product or service my business offers. In a recovering economy, a business should focus on three factors when pricing a product or service. Those factors are market demand, the cost of production, and the markup on the product or service the firm simply has to have to operate. Those are the factors a business owner must take into consideration when pricing their product or service for the market.
   
7. I promise to analyze my financial statements each accounting period and try to forecast the future for my company.
The only way you know how your company is doing is to analyze the financial statements you develop at the end of each accounting period. You need to use financial analysis to look at trends in your company and to compare your company with other companies in the same industry. This is called comparative financial analysis. You can then make adjustments to get your firm back on the right track if you find any problems.

8. I promise to keep better tax records in the future. If you use a computerized accounting program, this resolution should be pretty easy since the software will do the work for you. But remember the old computer adage! Garbage in, garbage out! Enter your accounting receipts on a daily basis. Your software is only as good as the information you give it.
   The only way to keep the end of your tax year from being a nightmare is to keep good tax records. It doesn't matter who does your taxes - you, your bookkeeper, or an outside CPA or accountant. You are ultimately responsible for supplying the receipts and documentation as well as paying the bill. If you will keep your tax receipts organized during the tax year, then the end of the year will be easy.
   Organized receipts serve other purposes. They make it less likely that you will be audited by the Internal Revenue Service which no one wants. They ensure that you find all the deductions to which you are entitled which lowers your tax liability. They are at your fingertips if you find a mistake on a past tax return and need to file an amended return. Don't forget that keeping track of the mileage that you drive for business purposes is part of this process.
   

Stick to these eight New Year's resolutions and your firm will prosper in 2012!

Here are some articles and videos that we recommend for our viewers

Toronto couple build sweet success from scratch

April Fong | Dec 23, 2012 8:22 AM ET
More from April Fong | @aprilfong

Peter J. Thompson/National Post Four years later and against the odds, Nadège Nourian and Morgan McHugh have two locations in Toronto, and are about to take Nadège Patisserie online.

In so many respects, Nadège Nourian and Morgan McHugh have come a long way: Ms. Nourian, a fourth-generation pastry chef born in Lyon, France, met Mr. McHugh, who hails from Toronto, in London, England.
In 2008 during the financial crisis, they came to Toronto with their dream of opening a French pâtisserie.
Four years later and against some odds, the life and business partners now have two Nadège Patisserie locations in Toronto, and have established an insatiable following in the city for their rainbow of specialty macaroons and growing array of European treats.

They are also gearing up for another expansion — this time online — that will have the potential to heighten their brand presence nationally and even globally.
“It feels like a third shop,” Ms. Nourian said about their online retail launch, which began in early December. “Both of these processes — the building of this website, the building of a shop — it’s been exactly the same.”
Yet this “third shop” seems less risky than their experience of opening a small business during a recession.

I was actually sleeping on the plywood in the shop a few times. I was just too tired to leave

National Postorgan McHugh renovated their first location in a 1,400 square-foot former photography studio near Trinity Bellwoods Park himself.

After uprooting both their lives from London to Toronto in 2008, Ms. Nourian and Mr. McHugh couldn’t get a bank loan as first-time restaurateurs and had to empty their savings into their dream. “We [put] every dime we had — and I mean everything — in the business. We lived with my aunt when we first moved to Toronto,” said Mr. McHugh, whose father owned The Penny Farthing café in Toronto’s Yorkville area in the 1950s.

Although Ms. Nourian admits they initially had doubts about whether to go through with their business plan, everything came together when the couple found a location for their upscale pastry shop: A 1,400 square-foot old photography studio at the eastern edge of Trinity Bellwoods Park on Queen Street West.

But to achieve the extensive, high-end renovation they envisioned would have cost tens of thousands of dollars, they said. Mr. McHugh, who has a building background, restored the space with his own hands within 3.5 months, working 18-hour days, seven days a week.

“I was actually sleeping on the plywood in the shop a few times. I was just too tired to leave,” he said. When the shop — a minimalist white space with pops of fuschia and an open concept kitchen — opened on July 8, 2009, the recession seemed to actually work in its favour. Hundreds of customers came through and Nadège Patisserie had to close three hours earlier than planned after the inventory completely sold out.

It was a sweet victory that Ms. Nourian said may have been a result of the limited restaurant and café openings in Toronto that year, which helped generate more buzz around their business.
Nadège Patisserie has grown to two shops and nearly 30 employees, from one shop with four employees. It has gradually bulked up its treat offerings — think pain au chocolat, pastries with artful bouquets of mini macaroons or berries on top, panna cotta treats sweetened with maple syrup — all led by the expertise of Ms. Nourian who has years of experience working in Michelin star restaurants.

The 2011 opening in Rosedale, a midtown area in Toronto, which features a temperature-controlled kitchen, also allowed the company to venture into becoming a chocolatier, creating specialty flavours such as roquefort dark chocolate.

It gives businesses a lot more marketing power. It gives you the ability to get yourself out there and expand your customer base geographically beyond your neighbourhood

Ms. Nourian and Mr. McHugh anticipate that when the online retail site is fully launched sales will increase 30%.
Sunil Mistry, a partner with KPMG Enterprise, stresses that an online presence is part of the “new normal world order” for small businesses.

“Every consumer out there today looks for an online presence — not only to buy from a retailer, but to see what they are,” Mr. Mistry said.

“It gives businesses a lot more marketing power. It gives you the ability to get yourself out there and expand your customer base geographically beyond your neighbourhood.”

Nadège Patisserie has already seen growing demand for its sweets from outside Toronto. The pastry shop often has visitors from, say, Vancouver and Calgary stopping by to take products home with them, Mr McHugh said.

“We’ve even had calls from Europe,” he said.

Still, Ms. Nourian and Mr. McHugh aren’t in any rush. The business partners are taking baby steps with their online retail expansion, they first rolled out a “soft opening” with online pick-up orders for select products such as the popular macaroons, gift baskets and Christmas cakes for local customers in early December.

They aim to take national delivery orders by early 2013.

“We know it will work but we want to make sure it runs as smoothly as possible,” Mr. McHugh said. “Instead of giving into the pressure we’re doing it slowly to see how it all unfolds. This is how we’ve grown our business.”

‘Social finance’ could play role in funding clean energy: Hamilton

Published on Friday December 21, 2012

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Solar Ship's hybrid aircraft flies over the Namib desert in western Africa. SOLAR SHIP HANDOUT

By Tyler Hamilton Energy and Technology Columnist

Banks? Venture capitalists? Private-equity investors?
Bah! Who needs them?

Well, most of us do. But at least 2012 brought us some more democratizing alternatives to financing innovative ideas – those often radical business proposals or community-level projects that can’t seem to get respect from traditional sources of funding.

There’s still much work to do, mind you, but the path forward for so-called social finance tools—falling under the umbrella of “impact investing”—is encouraging and could play a growing role in funding clean energy projects and products.

In Ontario, community bonds are one example of the trend taking hold. Community bonds, according to Grace Yogaretnam at Toronto’s Centre for Social Innovation, are small loans from a non-profit’s network of supporters. The money from these loans can be used to advance a specific social or environmental project that benefits the community. The loans bear interest and the bonds can be structured to be RRSP eligible.

There are several renewable energy projects in this province trying to leverage this new approach to financing, giving true meaning to the term “power by the people.” SolarShare Co-op has been leading the pack, selling what it calls “solar bonds” to help finance 18 solar power projects across southern Ontario – and counting. It’s enough so far to power 90 homes.

Members of the co-operative, about 410 at this point, purchase bonds in increments of $1,000, and in return earn 5 per cent annual interest over a five-year term. The money helps the co-op pay off higher-interest bridge financing used to construct the projects. A 20-year power purchase agreement with the province, through the feed-in-tariff (FIT) program, essentially guarantees that money will flow back and interest can be paid out.

This is what I meant earlier when I wrote “democratizing alternatives to financing.” The community bond model allows virtually anyone to buy into renewable energy in this province, and in doing so become participants in the electricity system. It means hundreds, potentially thousands, of people can take the place of a single bank.

In November, SolarShare finally got approval from the Financial Services Commission of Ontario to sell its solar bonds—up to $25,000 worth—to the general public. More than $1 million has already been raised. RRSP-eligibility will come early next year.

Another project featured here before, ZooShare Biogas Co-operative, is applying to the FIT program this week to sell biogas-generated electricity into the grid. The fuel will come from a “digester” built at the Toronto Zoo that will produce biogas from the poop of giraffes, zebras, elephants and other zoo animals that has been mixed together with food waste.

The hope is to start selling community bonds to support that project sometime next spring. (Disclosure: To support these community initiatives, I have signed up to be a member of both SolarShare and ZooShare, and so far own one solar bond.)

Another rising trend around social finance is the growth of crowdfunding. A typical set-up would be a website that allows anyone with an Internet connection and credit card to donate or invest in a specific project or business idea. Popular examples include the sites Kickstarter.com and Indiegogo.com, which both appeal to the philanthropic inclination of the masses.

One Canadian firm tapping into this approach is Toronto-based Solar Ship, which is building hybrid airships (part plane, part blimp) that are powered in part by the sun. Solar Ship is hoping to raise $1 million in donations to build one of its airships and send it on a mission to Africa, where it would deliver medical supplies to remote villages.

“2012 was the year that crowdfunding exploded onto the scene,” according to the website Crowdsourcing.org. “Sure, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Rockethub and others were around before this year, but the last 12 months saw the very concept permeate much deeper into the collective consciousness.”

Momentum picked up in April after the Jump Star Our Business Start-Ups (JOBS) Act in the U.S. was signed into law. It amends securities laws to recognize “crowdfunding” as an avenue for raising capital. Early next year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to lay out the formal rules of play.

One service taking advantage of this is Mosaic, a California-based start-up that’s starting to raise capital from the crowd to fund solar projects, with a promise of interest in return. Daniel Rosen, co-founder of Mosaic, said the big banks and brokerage houses simply aren’t set up to mobilize the masses for this kind of investment.

“Yet that is what so many people crave today. People want to see impact. They want to be connected to the power of their capital and see its force in the world,” Rosen wrote earlier this year in an online commentary.

Sensing that Ontario could be left behind, Brad Duguid, minister of economic development and innovation, said in November that the Ontario Securities Commission is currently studying the crowd funding option and that the government is supportive of making the changes that will allow it to happen.

“If the provinces do not allow crowd funding, will Canadian technology entrepreneurs be more inclined to locate their start-ups in the U.S.?” asked David Thring, a lawyer with law firm McMillan LLP, in a note to clients.

The risk is certainly there. And while the opportunity for crowdsourcing is exciting, it does raise a number of important questions, wrote Thring. “Who will emerge as the game-changer of Internet-based equity offerings and trading, in the same way that eBay emerged as a leader in resale of goods and Facebook emerged as a leader in social networks?

And, of course, what are the implications for the big banks, brokerage houses and venture capitalists?
Here’s an answer: they’re big.

Tyler Hamilton, author of Mad Like Tesla, writes weekly about green energy and clean technologies.