Quick answer: “Tax preparer” is a job description; CPA is a regulated designation. Anyone may prepare a tax return in Canada — “accountant” is not even a protected title — while a CPA answers to a provincial body for exams, experience, continuing education and conduct. For a simple personal return the difference may not matter. For a corporation, a CRA letter, or a decision with money attached, it usually does.
CPA or tax preparer: who regulates whom
A CPA in British Columbia is governed by CPABC — admission exams, supervised experience, mandatory continuing education, professional conduct rules, and a public register where anyone can verify the designation. A tax preparer, however experienced, is subject to none of that as a matter of law. That does not make every preparer careless — it means the accountability structures are personal rather than institutional.
What each can do
Both can prepare and file returns. The differences appear at the edges: financial statements under a professional standard come from a CPA firm with a public practice licence; representation strategy when the CRA asks questions benefits from someone whose designation is on the line alongside your file; and planning — remuneration, incorporation, timing — is judgement work, which is what the designation trains.
Which one you need
An employed person with a T4 and some slips is well served almost anywhere, and paying CPA rates for that return buys little. An incorporated owner is in different territory: the T2, the GIFI statements behind it, the salary-dividend decision each year, and the CRA correspondence that follows corporations around. That is designation work, and it is why this firm publishes fixed fees for it rather than hourly mystery.
Once the CPA question is settled, the choice is between individual firms — choosing between the firms that are left sets out what to ask each of them.
General information, not tax advice. Every situation differs — confirm anything that affects a decision on a free consult.