Early-Stage Companies & Independent Developers
Early-stage companies make their most expensive tax mistakes casually: a founder covering expenses from the company account, a contractor paid without a plan, books kept “later.” Clean structure and clean records cost little now and are worth a great deal at diligence time.
Early-stage companies make tax decisions in their first year that echo for a decade — share structure, founder compensation, and whether R&D work is being tracked in a way that can actually be claimed.
How we help
- Shareholder loan accounts kept clean — founder draws are a tax problem waiting to happen
- SR&ED eligibility flagged early, with records kept so a claim is actually supportable
- Contractor and employee arrangements set up correctly from the first hire
- GST registration and input tax credits from day one, including on pre-revenue spending
- Books and financial statements maintained to a standard that survives investor due diligence
- Coordination with your legal counsel on share structure and option plans
Common mistakes we see
- Not documenting SR&ED-eligible work as it happens. The Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) credit can be substantial, but only if the technical work and costs were tracked contemporaneously.
- Setting up the share structure without thinking about future investors or the lifetime capital gains exemption — fixable early, painful later.
- Paying founders and early staff informally, creating payroll and taxable-benefit problems that surface at the worst time.
- Burning cash on tooling and infrastructure without capturing it correctly for tax.
The British Columbia angle
BC offers its own incentives that stack with federal ones — the BC SR&ED tax credit and the Small Business Venture Capital (investor) tax credit programs. Getting registered and structured to qualify is worth doing before you raise, not after. We set the books up so the claims are there when you need them.