Self-initiation changes your tax life more than your clinical one
The day the CDHO authorizes you to self-initiate, scaling and root planing stop being tasks performed on a dentist's order and become services you sell in your own right. Financially, that is the bigger event. T4 employment turns into business revenue, and costs that used to be the clinic's problem, instruments, sterilization, scheduling software, a vehicle, are suddenly yours to track. A practice of one still needs books that show revenue by payer, costs by category and a profit figure a tax return can stand on.
That back office is what our End-to-End Accounting service delivers: bookkeeping, payroll where you pay yourself a salary through a corporation, financial reporting and the tax filing, run together so nothing falls between them.
Patient money arrives three ways
Independent hygiene revenue rarely comes through one pipe, and each pipe reconciles differently.
- Direct payment. Debit, e-transfer or a Square reader at the chair. Simple, but it has to be matched to an appointment record, not just a bank line.
- Private insurance. Many independent hygienists have the patient pay in full and claim reimbursement themselves; where you submit on the patient's behalf and wait for the insurer, receivables enter the books and need aging.
- The Canadian Dental Care Plan. Independent hygienists can enrol as providers and bill Sun Life directly. The plan pays its own fee grid, not your fee schedule, and patients in the higher income tiers owe a co-payment at the chair, so one appointment can settle in two amounts on two dates.
We run the practice on QuickBooks Online with Dext catching receipts, reconcile Sun Life deposits against submitted claims every month, and give co-payments their own line so an uncollected balance is visible the week it happens, not at year-end.
Rent the operatory or split the revenue: the contract writes your books
Most independent practices start inside someone else's dental office a day or two a week, and the two standard contracts produce different books.
| Question | Flat operatory rent | Revenue split |
|---|---|---|
| What the clinic charges | A fixed day or half-day rate | A percentage of your collections |
| Your revenue line | Everything you bill patients | Depends on the contract: your gross billings, or only the net the clinic remits |
| HST on the clinic's charge | 13%, and an exempt practice cannot recover it | 13% on the facility fee where the clinic is registered, equally unrecoverable |
| What we verify | Rent invoices match the contract rate | Whose patients, whose records and whose recall list the agreement says they are |
The percentage deal feels safer in a slow month, but the paperwork decides real questions: whether your books show gross revenue or a net payout, whether the clinic's cut is a deductible facility fee, and who owns the patient list if you leave. We read the agreement before building the chart of accounts, not after a dispute.
Exempt services, inclusive costs
Dental hygiene services are HST-exempt, so nothing the practice buys generates an input tax credit and every expense is recorded at its full, tax-inclusive cost. The bookkeeping consequence is discipline rather than complexity: clean expense categories, and a capital-asset register so the portable unit and the vehicle are ready for CCA when the return is prepared. How those numbers land on the filing is its own subject, and our hygienist tax pages cover it in full.
Sized for a practice of one
A two-day-a-week mobile practice does not need a monthly controller, and we do not price as if it does. Many hygienists start on CPA Quick Support: $99 a month for three topics, unlimited questions inside them and CRA letter review, then move to full End-to-End Accounting as the recall list fills. Anything beyond the subscription is quoted in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call, whether your patients sit in one Mississauga operatory or across the GTA in the back of a van.
