Why the CRA starts from your purchases
Auditors do not need your till to estimate your sales. They can pull invoices from your tobacco wholesaler and grocery jobbers, apply an industry markup, and compare the result to the revenue on your return. If purchases times a normal margin says one number and the T2 says a smaller one, the store has an audit that began in someone else's records.
Cash is the reason c-stores sit high on the list. A debit sale leaves a trail on both ends; a cash sale exists only in your POS and your deposit slip. That is not a reason to fear cash. It is a reason to run the till so the POS record and the bank record agree every single day, because those two documents are the store's entire defence.
The net-worth assessment, plainly
When an auditor decides the books cannot be trusted, the Income Tax Act lets the CRA assess income without them. The net-worth method adds up what you own, what you owe and what your household spent, year over year. If wealth plus lifestyle grew faster than declared income explains, the gap is assessed as unreported sales, often with gross-negligence penalties on top, and the onus shifts to you to take the number apart.
Undocumented money is what feeds the gap. A genuine gift from family that funded the renovation, a wedding envelope, savings brought from another country years ago: all real, and all read as skimmed sales if there is no paper. The CRA rarely stops at income tax either. An income reassessment on imputed sales usually drags a matching HST assessment behind it, at 13% on the taxable share of whatever sales figure the auditor built.
The defence is built years before the letter
| The exposure | The practice that closes it |
|---|---|
| Suppliers paid in cash out of the till | Every expense paid from the bank; deposits go in intact |
| Z-tapes and POS records tossed at year-end | Daily closes, tax tables and settlement records kept six years |
| A family gift or loan with no paper | A bank transfer plus a signed, dated note, made when it happens |
| Personal spending mixed with store cash | A fixed owner wage or draw, moved by transfer, every month |
| Renovations paid partly on the side | Invoices for every improvement, matched to bank payments |
None of this costs margin. It is habit, and after a month it runs itself. It also makes the store financeable and saleable, because a buyer's accountant applies the same tests an auditor does. The six-year retention rule is not optional either: the CRA can demand supporting records for any return inside the reassessment window, and a cash business that cannot produce them starts the conversation as the less credible party.
Planning that starts once the records are safe
Tax Planning & Advisory for a c-store is unglamorous and effective. We set the owner-pay mix so the corporation's roughly 12.2% small-business rate on the first $500,000 does its work while the household takes only what it needs. We time Class 8 cooler and freezer purchases and Class 13 leasehold work against profit spikes so the deduction lands where the income is. We calculate corporate and personal instalments so neither the tax account nor the HST account produces an April surprise, and we plan income tax and HST together, because in a cash business one audit invites the other.
Family changes the math too. Wages to a spouse or teenager who genuinely works the counter are deductible and shift income to lower brackets, but only when the payroll is real; that setup, and the TOSI rules around family dividends, are covered on our incorporation page rather than repeated here.
If the letter has already arrived
A net-worth proposal is not a final answer; it is an opening position built on assumptions, and assumptions can be demolished with evidence. CRA Audit & Review Support is its own engagement: we manage the correspondence, rebuild what can be rebuilt from bank records, POS data and supplier statements, and challenge lifestyle estimates line by line. Store owners across Mississauga and the GTA usually come to us at this stage; the ones who came earlier rarely need to. Either conversation starts with a free 15-minute discovery call, and every engagement is quoted in writing.
