What the small-business rate is for in a grocery
Profit left inside the corporation is taxed at roughly 12.2% on the first $500,000 of active income in Ontario, and in a grocery that money has a standing job list: the compressor rack that will not survive another July, the aging case line, the next store reset, the buying power that wins better supplier terms. So the plan starts with owner pay set from the household budget up. Salary creates RRSP room and CPP credits and keeps lenders comfortable; dividends flex with the year; whatever the household does not need stays behind the low rate doing store work. Tax Planning & Advisory revisits that mix every year, because both the store and the household move.
Refrigeration is a tax event you can schedule
A grocer's biggest purchases are predictable years in advance, which makes them plannable. The CCA class sets the pace of the deduction, and the calendar sets the year it starts:
| The purchase | How it deducts |
|---|---|
| Display cases, freezers and compressors you own | Class 8, 20% declining balance |
| Walk-in coolers and build-out in leased premises | Class 13, straight-line over the lease term |
| POS lanes, self-checkout and back-office computers | Class 50, 55% declining balance |
| The delivery van | Class 10, 30% declining balance |
| Repairing a rack or case you already own | A current expense in the year, no class at all |
Two details do real work. First, equipment that becomes available for use before 2028 skips the half-year rule under the accelerated investment incentive, so a Class 8 case line delivered and running in the final month of the fiscal year still claims the full 20% for that year, while letting delivery slip into the next fiscal year pushes the entire first claim a year out. Second, the repair-versus-capital line has money on it: swapping a failed compressor into an existing rack is generally a repair, deducted in full, while a new case line is capital, so the refrigeration contractor's invoice should describe what actually happened.
Family wages, proven by the timeclock
A family grocery already generates the evidence family payroll needs: a posted schedule, a timeclock, and work that plainly has to be done seven days a week. Wages to a spouse who runs ordering or to teenagers on the registers are deductible when the rate matches what a stranger would earn and the pay actually lands in their own accounts with T4s behind it; CPP does not start until age 18, which keeps the youngest payroll simple. Wages also spread RRSP room and CPP credits across the household, building retirement savings the store's eventual sale does not have to fund alone. Dividends are stricter company. The tax-on-split-income rules push family dividends to the top rate unless an exclusion applies, and the practical exclusion for a store family is real involvement averaging 20 hours a week, which the same timeclock proves. Keep the punches and the schedule, and the structure defends itself.
Year-end moves that fit food retail
Inventory is valued at the lower of cost and market, item by item, and every store carries stock the market has walked away from: the seasonal line that missed, discontinued centre-store SKUs, the pallet that never moved. Written down at year-end on the evidence of the count sheets, that loss lands in the year it actually happened instead of hiding inside a flattering inventory figure. A write-down is not a clearance decision either; the stock can keep selling at whatever price it fetches, the books just stop pretending. The count date is a choice too: counting close to year-end makes the biggest number on the return a fact rather than an estimate. We plan these moves alongside Corporate Tax Filing so the return records decisions, not defaults.
The store the kids might run
Groceries stay in families, and the handoff deserves years of runway. An estate freeze can cap today's value with the parents and let future growth accrue to the children who actually work the store, and the lifetime capital gains exemption, now $1.25 million per person on qualifying small-business shares, shapes how an eventual sale, inside the family or out, should be structured long before it happens. Freezes, share classes and wills get mapped together through Estate Planning while the question is still unhurried, which is exactly when the good options are all open. Grocers across the GTA start with a free 15-minute discovery call, and every engagement is quoted in writing, with no hourly surprises.
