When the schedule caps revenue, planning moves to the cost side
A hygiene practice sells clinical hours, and one clinician only has so many. You can tighten recall intervals and fill cancellations, but you cannot double the top line the way a retailer can, so the tax plan earns its keep on the other side of the ledger. With no input tax credits behind an exempt practice, a purchase costs its full, tax-included price, and the tax return is the only place any of that money comes back. Three levers matter most: the vehicle, the equipment schedule, and where deferral lives as profit grows.
The van is the branch office
Mobile practice means real kilometres: long-term-care homes, retirement residences and housebound patients across Mississauga and the western GTA. When your home base, where the sterilizer runs and the recall list lives, is the practice's principal place of business, the drive from that base to the first resident's bedside is business travel, not commuting. A kilometre log is what proves the percentage, and the percentage decides how much of the vehicle the practice actually deducts. Fuel, insurance, repairs and the 407 tolls that keep a care-home schedule on time all follow that same percentage.
What you drive matters as much as how far you drive it.
| Question | Cargo van fitted as a mobile unit | SUV that doubles as the family car |
|---|---|---|
| Likely CCA treatment | Class 10 motor vehicle at 30%, where hauling the equipment dominates its use | Class 10.1 passenger vehicle at 30% |
| Cost ceiling | None; the full cost enters the class | Capped at the passenger-vehicle limit, whatever you paid |
| Business-use percentage | High, and easy to defend | Contested without a disciplined logbook |
| HST on the purchase | 13%, unrecoverable, folded into capital cost | The same |
The classification is a facts test built on seating, fit-out and actual use in the year you buy, so we assess it before the purchase, while the answer can still change the choice of vehicle.
Instrument money and equipment money deduct at different speeds
The CCA system is kinder to small instruments than to big units. Medical and dental instruments costing under $500 each fall into Class 12 at 100%: scalers, curettes, mirrors and sharpening equipment can be written off in the year they enter service. The portable delivery unit, the compressor and the autoclave sit in Class 8 at 20% declining balance, and the laptop running your charting software is Class 50 at 55%. Nothing claims until it is available for use, so a unit delivered in January rather than December pushes the whole first claim back a year.
Because no ITC exists, the number entering each class is the tax-included invoice price. The practice commits 113% of the sticker and recovers it only through deductions, which is exactly why an equipment purchase deserves a call before the order, not a shrug at year-end.
Where deferral lives before a corporation, and after one
For an unincorporated hygienist, the RRSP is the main deferral tool: T2125 profit is earned income, it builds contribution room, and a deduction spent against a strong year beats one wasted against a parental-leave year. CPP stings when you fund both shares yourself, but it is also the only pension many solo practitioners are building, so we treat it as a planning input rather than a pure cost.
The larger deferral only exists inside a Health Profession Corporation, where profit the household does not need is taxed at roughly 12.2% on the first $500,000 instead of your marginal rate. The honest threshold is simple: the corporation starts paying for itself once the practice reliably earns more than you draw. Our Incorporation service runs that math on your numbers, and says not yet when it is not yet.
Planning is a calendar, not a spring ritual
A standing Tax Planning & Advisory engagement puts dates on all of it: a purchase review before year-end while delivery timing can still be managed, an instalment recalculation when the booking pattern shifts, a business-use check before the logbook habit fades, and a fresh look at the corporation question in any year profit steps up. Everything is quoted in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call, and sized honestly for a solo practice.
