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Book Review: Make Sure It's Deductible

By CO Staff @canadaone |

Make Sure It's Deductible
By Evelyn Jacks
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Ryerson
ISBN: 0075605430

If tax time has you down and you're not sure what expenses you can claim, how to divide shared personal and business expenses, or how to maximize your home office expenses, Make Sure It's Deductible is a great book you can rely on to answer your questions.

While a lot of the contents are very dry reading, this book delivers on its purpose. It provides small business tax tips, and an overview of what – and how – you can deduct in your small business. For example, if you use a car for both business and personal trips, Jacks describes a simple worksheet you can use to calculate your deductible auto expenses.

One of the nicest things about this book is that Jacks constantly links her explanations to real-life situations and actual legal precedents. She regularly uses real examples of entrepreneurs who have suddenly found themselves with an unexpected audit or personal worth reassessment, explaining the outcome of each case. These examples help the reader understand the material in the book, while bringing home Jacks' points.

The one thing this book doesn't do is provide an in-depth explanation of some calculations, referring the reader instead to their tax advisor for this work. For example, while Jacks highlights the Capital Costs Allowance (CCA) and uses the purchase of a new car in one example, she doesn't explain how she determined the CCA write-offs in her example.

Make Sure It's Deductible is best suited for the self-employed business owner, rather than the growing small business. Examples often refer to very small companies or self-employed individuals, and issues related to growing businesses, such as payroll expenses or R&D tax credits, are only touched upon briefly, if at all. This book is an excellent resource for self-employed or micro business owners who are looking to do their taxes, and do them right!

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