Meeting Revenue Canada auditor
Finally the day arrived. The Revenue Canada auditor had agreed to meet me and my accountant at my condominium building. At 7:30am both of them arrived. We went into the cards room. Mind you the building I live in looks amazing! Even the auditor from Revenue Canada said as much. He was really interested in the building and asked me several questions about it. For example, how much the units are selling for? How is the building? How is the quality? And so on…
All necessary papers come out
I had brought all the receipts which I had been keeping with me, all nicely organized. I had all my bank statements and whatever else I thought could help with the audit. I presented all of this to the auditor, after formalities were done with.
Audit not random
The auditor went over everything and told me that I had brought the audit onto myself. I had ignored the letters which they had sent me and thus, they had been forced to look into my account in more detail. Hmm… all this while my accountant was just sitting still with his mouth open. He was the one who had actually told me not to worry about those letters! Every time my accountant tried to say something the auditor told him that he was totally incorrect and that was not the way it was.
Final verdict
Finally, end came and auditor told me that including all the late charges etc I owed them about $30,000-$35,000 in payroll only. That did not include GST! But since I was nice and co-operated with him, he had reduced the fines as much as he could and I only owed $7,000 in payroll fines to date. I didn’t know whether to feel good or bad. On top of that since I had used my company account to pay for personal stuff all my corporation income was to be treated as my personal income now. That was bad!! No more writing the car’s lease off either!
Anyhow, things looked quite bad for me and my accountant was no help either.
So, as it stands right now, I owe Revenue Canada quite a bit of money! Adding all that to the debt I’m already in makes for quite a mess. Talk about a challenging situation!
Good-byes
Auditor left while setting another date for all of us to meet in the near future so he would give me a T4 for personal income. And my accountant waved good bye to me while letting me know once again that he would send me the bill for today!
Conclusion
I get the feeling that you do get what you pay for! The accountant totally screwed me up! I had followed his advise from day one and he had assured me nothing would happen to me. How none of his clients had ever gotten audited! He had given me wrong advise as well. I could never ask him any questions either. He always seemed to be in a rush. Now I actually found out that he had a full-time job as well, so accounting was his part-time business.
Actually, he is also a mortgage broker and every time I asked him about accounting advice, he would start asking me to give him mortgages (since I’m also a real estate sales person).
But I also realized how silly it was of me to totally leave everything in his hands. I should have done a little more research about taxes in Canada. I thought he was the professional and I was paying him for his advice. So, I learned a big lesson here. No matter what, one should always know the basics at the very least. It’s not good to rely on someone so completely!
Or get someone decent and experienced. It may cost a little more initially but help tremendously in the long run! 
To think if I had only hired someone more experienced, he or she might have saved me thousands of dollars that I am going to end up paying in taxes! Ah well… live and learn.
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