WIP is income, and architects never had the exemption
Section 34 of the Income Tax Act let a short list of professionals — lawyers, accountants, dentists, physicians, veterinarians and chiropractors — exclude work in progress from income until it was billed. Architects were never on the list, and the election itself was phased out after 2017. So the drawing set your team is halfway through at year-end goes into income as inventory of a professional business, valued at the lower of its cost and the amount you could reasonably expect to bill for it.
Cost is not zero. It includes the salaries and subconsultant charges sunk into the unbilled work, which is why we take a percent-complete reading on every open phase at year-end and keep the working paper. A defensible WIP number is built from timesheets and phase fees, not estimated in April.
Retainers and deposits run on different clocks
Money received before the work is done is not all the same thing. An advance retainer that will be applied against phase billings is income when received, with a paragraph 20(1)(m) reserve available for the portion still unearned at year-end. A genuinely refundable security deposit is a liability, not income. HST has its own rule: a true deposit attracts no HST until it is applied against an invoice, while a simple prepayment of fee is taxable when it is paid or becomes due, whichever comes first.
| Arrangement | Income tax | HST |
|---|---|---|
| Retainer applied against future phase billings | Income when received, reserve for the unearned part | Due when the amount is paid or becomes due |
| Refundable security deposit | Not income while it stays refundable | None until applied to an invoice |
| Milestone billed at the start of a phase | Income, less a reserve where the work follows year-end | Due on the invoice date |
The contract wording decides which row you are in, so we read the OAA 600 payment schedule before classifying anything, rather than trusting the nickname the amount carries in the ledger.
Flow-through billing and the HST return
As prime consultant you charge 13% HST on the whole fee, including the structural, mechanical and electrical portions you pass through, and you recover the HST those subconsultants charged you as input tax credits. Net HST ends up resting on your own fee and markup, but only if the sub invoices are captured and claimed in the right period. The common error is booking subconsultant fees as an expense reimbursement with no HST charged on the re-bill; that understates the return in a way CRA desk reviews catch quickly.
Disbursements split two ways. A building-permit or planning-application fee paid to a municipality as the client's agent carries no HST and is re-billed without it. Printing, couriers and travel absorbed into your own bill become part of your taxable fee. Kept in separate accounts all year, the distinction takes minutes at filing time instead of hours.
A year-end that fits the studio
A December 31 year-end puts your WIP count in the holidays and your T2 season against your busiest proposal months. Many studios do better with a non-calendar year-end in a quieter stretch, which also gives the owner-pay decisions a cleaner runway — the timing side of that lives with our tax planning work. We also reset instalments after every filing so one strong project year does not dictate a slow year's remittances.
The T2 and the people behind it
The corporate mechanics are standard and unforgiving: roughly 12.2% combined Ontario rate on the first $500,000 of active income, the T2 due six months after year-end, the balance due three months after year-end for most small CCPCs, and instalments once tax passes $3,000. Our Corporate Tax Filing work builds the return from the same ledger that carries the WIP and retainer accounts, so nothing is reconstructed in filing season.
The February slip run covers the whole studio: T4s for staff, T4A slips for contract technologists and other self-employed fees, T5s for principals' dividends. We prepare the principals' personal returns alongside, so salary, dividends and instalments tell one story across the T2 and the T1s. And when a review letter arrives — an input-tax-credit spike in a heavy subconsultant quarter is the usual trigger — CRA Audit & Review Support answers from working papers we already hold.
Source: CRA — GST/HST for businesses.
