Quick answer: Corporate and business lawyers send us the clients they incorporate — who leave your office with a minute book and no idea a first-90-days clock is running. We handle the accounting side from day one, and when our clients need share restructuring, agreements or a sale, that work is referred to lawyers, not improvised by accountants. No fee-splitting either way.
The gap between your office and their first filing
A freshly incorporated client leaves with articles and good intentions. What follows — CRA program accounts, the year-end election, payroll registration before the first paycheque, GST registration before it is mandatory in hindsight — is nobody’s file. Twelve months later it is an expensive mess you get blamed for not mentioning. A standing referral closes that gap with one sentence: “here is who our incorporation clients talk to about the tax side.”
What your clients get
- A free consultation that maps their first-year obligations — the setup checklist made specific to them.
- Published fixed fees, so recommending us never embarrasses you on price.
- A CPA who stays reachable in-year — the standard we publish and invite them to hold us to.
What flows back
Accounting clients generate legal work constantly: share reorganizations, shareholder agreements the tax guide tells them to get, purchases and sales, estate freezes. We do not draft; we refer — to lawyers whose incorporation clients we already look after. Reciprocity without a fee attached is the whole model.
The three moments your client needs a CPA
Almost all of the accounting work that touches a corporate lawyer’s file arrives at one of three points, and each has a deadline that binds your timeline as much as ours.
| Moment | What the accounting side owns |
|---|---|
| Incorporation | Program accounts, the fiscal year-end choice, payroll registration before the first cheque, GST registration before it becomes mandatory in hindsight |
| Reorganisation | The elections, and their dates, which are rarely the ones a closing schedule assumes |
| Sale or wind-up | Asset versus share consequences, the capital dividend account, and whether the GST/HST election is available |
The election dates that bind a closing
These are the ones that most often surprise a legal timeline, because none of them is a filing-season date.
- Section 85 rollover. Form T2057 is due with the earliest return of any party to the transfer — frequently the individual transferor rather than the corporation. It also cannot be filed at all until the CRA has an accepted account number on file, which is not a same-week item.
- Capital dividend. Form T2054 is due by the earlier of the day the dividend becomes payable and the day any part of it is paid, and “payable” is whatever the directors’ resolution says. A resolution declaring a dividend payable immediately makes the election due immediately.
- Sale of a business. Form GST44 keeps GST/HST off the transaction, but it is filed by the purchaser with their next return, and it is unavailable where the vendor is registered and the buyer is not. Registering the buyer belongs on the closing checklist.
Where the CRA accepts a late election it charges a penalty of the lesser of $8,000 and $100 for each complete month, and generally will not process the election until it is paid.
Where our work stops
Our public practice licence covers compilation engagements, so assurance work goes to a firm licensed for it. We do not draft, opine on, or interpret the documents you produce — we tell you what the tax consequence of a structure is, and you decide how to paper it.
The reverse holds too. When an accounting client needs share restructuring, a shareholders’ agreement or a sale documented, that work goes to a lawyer rather than being improvised by accountants. No fee-splitting in either direction.
Common questions about for lawyers
Do you give legal advice or draft documents?+
Is there a referral fee arrangement?+
Can you take a client who incorporated months ago and did nothing since?+
How should we send someone?+
Related reading
Give your incorporation clients a next step
One intro call. Your client leaves with their first-year map, and you leave with one fewer follow-up you were never being paid for.
Book an intro callinfo@everstonecpa.com“Sunny and his team have been completing my bookkeeping, taxes and financials for the last 2 years and they have been amazing. Thank you!”