Your WIP is taxable before you bill it
For taxation years beginning after March 21, 2017, the federal budget eliminated billed-basis accounting for designated professionals, lawyers included, and the five-year transition is over. Unbilled work-in-progress must now be included in income at year-end, valued at the lower of cost and fair market value. None of this works without complete dockets; the year-end file starts in the time records, not in the ledger.
The valuation is where the return is defended. Cost means the direct cost of producing the unbilled work: associate and clerk time, plus allocable overhead. A sole practitioner's own hours carry no salary cost, so the cost of much of their WIP is genuinely small, and the profit margin in a file is still taxed only when billed. We paper that valuation matter by matter, because an assessor will ask how the number was built, not whether one exists.
Contingency files are the exception. Where the retainer says the fee is billable only if the matter succeeds, the CRA accepts that nothing is receivable until the right to collect arises, so those files generally add nothing to year-end income until settlement. The economics of carrying them is a different conversation, and it belongs to the CFO side of the practice.
Disbursements: agent or own expense decides the HST
CRA policy statement P-209R sorts a lawyer's disbursements into two boxes, and the box decides the tax. A cost incurred as the client's agent passes through untouched: no HST charged on the re-bill, no input tax credit claimed. A cost that is the firm's own expense is part of your fee: the firm claims the ITC and charges 13% HST when it bills the amount out, even if the original supplier charged no tax at all.
| Disbursement | Treatment on the client's bill |
|---|---|
| Court filing fees paid as agent | Re-billed with no HST; no ITC claimed by the firm |
| Government registration fees paid on the client's behalf | Agent pass-through, outside the HST base |
| Couriers, photocopies, travel | Firm's own expense; ITC claimed, 13% charged on the recharge |
| Online research and search subscriptions | Own expense, part of the fee, taxable at 13% |
Billing software will happily apply one tax code to everything, which is how firms end up charging HST on court fees or quietly absorbing tax on couriers. We set the two categories in the practice-management system once, and every bill after that comes out right.
The right return for the structure you actually have
A sole practitioner files a T1 with form T2125 on a calendar year-end; the return is due June 15 but the balance is still due April 30. A partnership allocates profit to the partners under the firm agreement, and many partnerships must also file a T5013 return, though small partnerships made up only of individuals are often exempt. A professional corporation files a T2 within six months of its chosen year-end and pays roughly 12.2% on its first $500,000 of active income in Ontario.
We prepare all three through Corporate Tax Filing and Personal Tax Filing, and we keep the pieces consistent: the WIP figure in the statements is the WIP figure in the return, and partner allocations tie to the partnership agreement, not to whoever drew the most cash. Instalments follow the filings: quarterly for individuals once net tax owing passes $3,000, monthly or quarterly for corporations, reset after every return so a strong year never turns into arrears interest.
HST that respects the trust account
A retainer deposited to trust is not payment; it is the client's money. HST generally becomes collectible when you deliver the bill, not when funds land in trust, so a firm remitting on trust deposits is prepaying tax it has not yet earned. We align the HST return with the billings journal, capture input tax credits on rent, software, insurance and library costs, and set the filing frequency, annual, quarterly or monthly, to match the firm's cash rhythm. If a return is ever queried, CRA Audit & Review Support handles the correspondence from records we already maintain.
Source: CRA — GST/HST for businesses.
