Partnership or association: the fork that decides every return
Before any midwife's return can be right, the group has to know what it is. If the members carry on practice together as a true partnership, income and expenses are computed at the partnership level and allocated out, and once the group's absolute revenues plus absolute expenses pass $2 million, a T5013 information return is mandatory. A group of six or eight midwives billing full caseloads crosses that line sooner than anyone expects. If instead the group is an association of independent practitioners sharing a clinic, there is no partnership return at all: each midwife reports her own course-of-care fees and her agreed share of clinic costs on her own T2125.
Plenty of groups have never settled the question in writing. The practice agreement matters, and so does conduct: pooled billings and shared profit look like partnership to the CRA even when nobody used the word. We read the agreement first and file accordingly, for the group and for each member.
A T2125 in midwife terms
The self-employment schedule itself, Form T2125, rewards specificity. For a Registered Midwife the recurring lines are:
- Professional fees: the CMO annual registration fee and Association of Ontario Midwives dues, plus professional liability costs.
- Clinical supplies: birth kits and consumables expensed as used.
- Equipment: Dopplers, oxygen equipment, birth stools and similar gear, depreciated as Class 8 capital cost allowance rather than written off in one line.
- Vehicle: home births and clinic days across a wide catchment, at every hour. Driving from home straight to a birth in active labour still needs a kilometre log to be deductible, and the log is the difference between a claim that survives review and one that does not.
- On-call costs: the practice share of a phone that is never off, and a home workspace claim where charting and on-call duties genuinely qualify it.
One double-claim trap is specific to practice groups: your overhead share. If the group pays the rent and software and charges your share back to you, that charge is your deduction; the underlying bills belong to the group. Members who also collect clinic receipts and claim them again are deducting the same dollar twice, and it is the first thing a reviewer checks in a shared clinic.
The slips will not match your ledger, and that is normal
The group reports your fees on a T4A, box 048, and the slip shows what was paid in the calendar year. A course of care completed in November and paid in January lands on next year's slip; your records recognize the work when your billing does. So the T4A and your ledger will disagree in most years, and the correct response is documentation, not panic. We keep a course log reconciled to bank deposits, file from the records, and hold the variance explanation in the file, because the CRA's matching program reads T4As and asks about gaps.
Who files what
| Who | What gets filed | The deadline trap |
|---|---|---|
| Each member midwife | T1 with a T2125 | Filing is due June 15, but the balance owing is due April 30 |
| The group, if a partnership | T5013 once revenues plus expenses pass $2 million | Allocations must match the partnership agreement, every year |
| A Health Profession Corporation | T2 corporate return | Due six months after year-end, with tax owing earlier |
| The group as payer | T4s for staff, T4As for members, locums and second attendants | All due the last day of February |
We prepare all four layers so they agree with each other, through Corporate Tax Filing for incorporated members and Personal Tax Filing for everyone's T1. When a CRA letter arrives asking about a T4A gap or a vehicle claim, our CRA Audit & Review Support answers it from a file that was built to be read.
The HST return most midwives never file
Midwifery services are exempt under the Excise Tax Act, at any income level. There is no registration to make, no HST to charge, and no input tax credits to claim, no matter how large the caseload grows. The exception is taxable side income: consulting engagements for organizations, expert reports, workshop fees billed to institutions. Those supplies count toward the $30,000 small-supplier threshold; exempt clinical fees never do. A midwife with a growing sideline needs someone watching that line before registration is overdue, and that is a question we track through the year, not one we discover in April.
