Put the laser on the right side of year-end
Capital cost allowance starts when a device is available for use, not when it is ordered or financed. A platform delivered and commissioned in the last month of the fiscal year deducts exactly like one that ran all twelve, and until the end of 2027 the accelerated investment incentive suspends the half-year rule for most new equipment, so a Class 8 laser earns its full 20 percent in year one. Financing changes none of this: a machine bought on a loan still claims full CCA, and the interest deducts on top.
| What the clinic buys | CCA class | The write-off |
|---|---|---|
| Laser, IPL or RF platform | Class 8 | 20% declining balance, full rate in year one through 2027 |
| Treatment beds, furniture, sterilizers | Class 8 | Same 20% pool |
| Build-out of treatment rooms | Class 13 | Straight-line over the lease term |
| Computers and POS hardware | Class 50 | 55% declining balance |
CCA is a choice, not an obligation: unclaimed amounts wait in the pool for a year that needs them more. So the real planning question is purchase timing, a strong year absorbing a December delivery, a lean year sometimes preferring January, decided with a projection in front of us rather than a vendor's quarter-end incentive.
The exit side of the pool matters too. Trading an old platform in reduces the pool by the trade-in value, and selling a heavily depreciated device for more than its remaining pool balance triggers recapture, past deductions coming back into income in the year of sale. A clinic refreshing technology every few years should see that number before the upgrade is signed, not on the return afterward.
A reserve for the treatments you still owe
Prepaid package money is included in income when it is received, but the Income Tax Act allows a reserve for amounts tied to services not yet delivered, pushing the tax into the year the sessions actually happen. The reserve is only as strong as the redemption records behind it: a session-by-session schedule of what remained owed at year-end, which is why we like the books kept inside End-to-End Accounting, where that liability schedule already exists. Balances that will never be redeemed eventually come into income; the reserve defers tax, it does not erase it.
Salary, dividends and what stays behind
Profit retained in the corporation faces Ontario's combined 12.2 percent small-business rate on the first $500,000 of active income, and a medspa has a natural use for that deferral: the next platform, the third treatment room, the retail inventory build before the holidays. What the owner needs personally comes out as salary, which creates RRSP room and CPP entitlement, or dividends, which skip payroll cost but arrive with nothing withheld, so personal instalments get planned instead of guessed. The mix is a yearly decision made from real numbers, not a rule of thumb.
Family members who genuinely work in the clinic, on the front desk, on marketing, on inventory, can be paid a reasonable salary for that work; wages for real duties are deductible to the corporation and are not touched by the split-income rules. The discipline is ordinary evidence: a role, hours, pay that matches what an outsider would earn.
Retained profit that turns into an investment portfolio brings its own dial: once passive investment income passes $50,000 in a year, the small-business limit starts to shrink. We watch the balance as it builds, because the fix is choosing where surplus sits before the grind arrives, not after.
TOSI has a retail-shelf exception worth testing
Dividends paid to a spouse who does not work in the clinic are normally caught by the tax-on-split-income rules at top rates. One exception, excluded shares, requires among other things that less than 90 percent of the corporation's business income comes from services. A medspa with a genuine skincare retail line is one of the few clinic businesses that can even attempt that test, because product sales are not services. It is a measurement, not a loophole: the spouse must be 25 or older and hold shares carrying at least 10 percent of votes and value, and the income mix has to be demonstrated from the books each year.
We run that test annually inside Tax Planning & Advisory, alongside the device timing, the reserve and the remuneration mix, and we put the plan in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call. One plan, three clocks, reviewed before every year-end.
