Accounting for Healthcare Professionals in Scarborough

The decision to incorporate depends on your net income level and whether you expect to retain earnings inside the corporation. For most healthcare professionals in Ontario, incorporation starts to make sense when you are earning significantly more than your personal living expenses — because income left inside a medical professional corporation (MPC) is taxed at a lower corporate rate, and that tax deferral compounds over time. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario and other regulatory colleges each have their own rules about share ownership, so the structure must be set up correctly from the start.

It depends on your regulatory college. CPSO permits physicians to include certain family members as shareholders in a Medicine Professional Corporation, subject to restrictions. Similarly, RCDSO permits dentists to have spouse or family member shareholders in a Dentistry Professional Corporation. The CRA also scrutinizes income splitting through family corporations under TOSI (Tax on Split Income) rules, which apply where the recipient is not actively involved in the business. We review your specific college rules and TOSI exposure before setting up any shareholder arrangement.

In most cases, yes. Healthcare services supplied by physicians, dentists, registered nurses, and other regulated health professionals are exempt from HST under Schedule V of the Excise Tax Act. This means you do not charge HST on insured or OHIP-billed services, and you also cannot claim input tax credits on most expenses related to those services. However, certain services — such as cosmetic procedures, private insurance billing, or third-party reports — may be taxable. The line between exempt and taxable can be important at higher revenue levels.

The main differences are the mix of revenue sources (OHIP, private insurance, direct-pay patients), the HST exempt status of most services, the regulatory requirements around corporate structure, and the importance of RRSP/RRIF planning given that healthcare professionals typically cannot participate in employer pension plans. OHIP reconciliation also requires matching remittance advice statements to your billing records — which is different from reconciling a standard bank deposit. We are set up to handle all of these workflows.

We work with healthcare professionals across multiple disciplines in Scarborough and the GTA. We are not in a position to disclose client names, but our experience spans physicians, dentists, speech-language pathologists, registered massage therapists, and chiropractors. If you would like to discuss your specific situation, we offer a free consultation where we can explain exactly how we would structure the engagement for your practice type.