Tax preparation in Mission

Ordinary preparation, first

For a current-year return the process is the standard one: documents in through a secure portal, the return prepared and reviewed with you by a CPA, e-filed, fixed fee quoted in writing first — personal returns from $100. Mission filers work entirely remotely, and most returns cost an evening of gathering documents and a call to review the draft. If that is what you came for, the tax services page has the full scope. The rest of this page is for the other situation.

What actually happens when returns go unfiled

Three things, in order. First, if a year had a balance owing, a late-filing penalty attached the day after the deadline and interest has compounded on both ever since — the cost grows with time, which is the honest argument for starting now rather than next year. Second, if a year had a refund, nothing bad happened at all: there is no penalty for filing a refund year late, only your own money sitting unclaimed, and benefit payments — GST credits, child benefit — that stopped because the CRA had no income figure to calculate them from. Third, given long enough, the CRA stops waiting and issues an arbitrary assessment: a return it writes for you, from the slips it holds, with none of your deductions in it. An arbitrary assessment is not a settlement — it is a demand, and it is almost always worse than the real number.

The sequence that gets someone current

Catch-up filing is one project, not a series of annual projects. The slips the CRA already holds can be retrieved through representative access, which reconstructs most of a T4 or investment year without hunting for paper. Years are then prepared oldest-first — because carry-forwards flow forward, and a loss or RRSP amount in the oldest year changes every year after it — and filed together with a clear picture of the total position before anything goes in. Where balances and penalties are material, the taxpayer relief process exists for penalties tied to circumstances genuinely beyond your control, and the ten-year window on it makes waiting the one clearly wrong move.

The self-employed and incorporated catch-up

Unfiled business years usually mean unfiled GST too, and often books that were never kept. That is still one project: bank and card statements reconstruct a business year surprisingly well, the GST periods get filed alongside the income years, and a corporation's missing T2s are handled on the same oldest-first logic. What matters is sequencing the CRA accounts together — income tax, GST, payroll — because paying one while another sits unfiled just moves the pressure around.

What it feels like from the other side

People carrying unfiled years expect the conversation to be uncomfortable, and it is the opposite of that — this is routine work, there is a defined sequence, and the total is a number, not a mystery. The file is almost always smaller than it looks from outside: most multi-year catch-ups involve some refund years nobody knew about, and the balance-owing years stop growing the day they are filed. Getting current is also what reopens ordinary planning — instalments that match reality, benefits that restart, and a clean base for the year you are actually in.

Businesses that also want fractional CFO in Mission and Mission GST filing can have both quoted together.

Owners who need corporate tax in Mission and the Mission personal tax page as well will find it on the same terms.

If the books behind the return also need work, bookkeeping in Mission covers catching them up and keeping them current.

For the arithmetic on a specific year, the late-filing penalty calculator shows what each month of delay actually costs.