The loan payment is not the deduction
Most tree companies finance the fleet, and financing splits every machine into two numbers that refuse to match. The loan payment is cash but mostly not deductible, because principal never is; the deduction is capital cost allowance plus interest, and it follows the CRA's schedule rather than the lender's. Early in a loan, CCA usually runs ahead of the principal and the return looks friendly. In the back half, the pool has shrunk while the payments have not, and a company can owe real tax in a year when every spare dollar went to the lender.
The pattern is sharpest in this trade because the iron is expensive relative to revenue. A bucket truck, a chipper and a stump grinder can outweigh a year of sales for a young company, and each usually arrives with its own financing. The crossover is predictable, so we schedule it: our Tax Planning & Advisory work maps each loan's amortization against its CCA pool, which is how a client knows in March, not at filing, that this is the year the deductions thin out.
Where the yard sits in the classes
Chip trucks and bucket trucks depreciate in Class 10 at 30% declining balance. Chippers, stump grinders and most towed or stationary equipment pool in Class 8 at 20%. Saws, climbing hardware and hand tools under $500 apiece are written off in full through Class 12, which matters in a trade that eats chainsaws. Under the accelerated investment incentive, the half-year rule is suspended for eligible new purchases through 2027, so a machine put to work before year-end earns its full first-year rate.
Two habits protect the claims. The 13% HST on a major purchase only comes back as an input tax credit with the paperwork intact, and a machine only starts claiming once it is available for use, so delivery dates near year-end are worth managing.
When a machine leaves the fleet
Tree work is hard on iron, and every exit has a tax consequence:
| What happened to the machine | What the return sees |
|---|---|
| Sold outright | Proceeds reduce the class pool; drive the pool negative and recapture puts past deductions back into income |
| Traded in on a newer unit | A disposal at the trade allowance, not at zero; the new machine enters the pool at its full cost |
| Crushed, rolled or written off by the insurer | The payout counts as proceeds of disposition, so a cheque for a destroyed chipper can carry tax with it |
| Repaired after damage | A repair that restores is an expense; an upgrade that improves is capitalized into the class |
The insurer row is the one that surprises people. Replacement-property rules can defer that income when the payout is reinvested in the successor machine within the allowed window, but only when the election is planned, so tell us about the write-off before the settlement, not after the next return. Trade-in season deserves the same look: a busy company turning over two machines in a year can empty a class without noticing, and recapture or a terminal loss lands accordingly.
Paying yourself after a storm year
A storm year drops profit into the corporation, and the owner's decision is how much of it should leave. Salary is deductible to the company and builds RRSP room; dividends are simpler and lighter on payroll costs; profit left inside is taxed at roughly 12.2% combined in Ontario on the first $500,000 of active income and becomes next year's equipment money. We usually smooth the owner's pay across the loud years and the quiet ones rather than mirroring the weather. A spouse who genuinely runs dispatch and billing can be paid a reasonable wage for the work; dividends to family members, though, run into the TOSI rules quickly, and we test the facts before a dollar moves.
A plan with dates on it
Planning here follows a calendar: an equipment and financing review before the buying season, a pre-year-end check on CCA, disposals and remuneration, and instalments rechecked whenever a storm changes the year. Walla Assaf's decade in banking and corporate finance means the lender's side of an equipment deal is familiar ground, and Business Financing Advisory runs beside the tax plan when the next truck needs terms as much as it needs a deduction. We put the fee in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call.
