Income Tax - Employee Benefits

Overview:

In today’s knowledge-based economy, human capital and human resources represent increasingly valuable assets to all sizes and forms of business. The process of attracting and retaining skilled employees constitutes a critical success factor for most businesses, motivating employers to provide formal and informal benefits as part of their compensation package.  An understanding of the income tax implications of benefits is a critical component in assessing their suitability for the employee group.

This course provides a review of the income tax implications for benefits, including benefits offered broadly to arm’s length employees and benefits tailored to key employees. To the extent that the benefits may have differing implications to employees who are also shareholders, those implications are also discussed. You will enhance your understanding of income tax issues that arise from various types of benefits by assessing the tax-effectiveness of various benefit plans and employment benefit choices as well as ensuring compliance with the tax rules. You will also increase your ability to advise on tax-effective employee remuneration strategies using benefit plans.

Course Content:

This course covers several topics, including:

• Income tax treatment of benefits
• Employee allowances and automobile benefits
• Goods and Services Tax and Harmonized Sales Tax (GST/HST)
• Planning opportunities for key employees
• Stock Options
• Other employee benefits

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this course, you will learn how to:

• Apply their tax knowledge to assess the tax implications of various employee benefits
• Advise employers on the tax issues which must be considered in selecting and delivering employee benefits
• Incorporate the tax implications into their evaluation of employment benefit alternatives
• Evaluate the income tax implications of existing and proposed employment benefits

Who Will Benefit: 

This course will benefit employers and advisors who want to understand the taxation of employee benefits, including both the general principals of taxation in this area and specific benefits that have unusual income tax complexities.