Construction company shareholder house loan and GST

Possibly an easy answer here… I get this situation different times with small business clients. But I’m having a mind block now when reading the ITA on this :expressionless: Owner of a corporation is building a personal house. One of the companies supplier accounts is used to purchase an item for the personal house and thus the company also pays for it. Should the company expense and claim the GST ITCs on the purchase and then invoice the owners for it, charging the GST as well? Or is it acceptable to simply debit the shareholders loan for the combined expense and GST at the point the company pays for the personal expense provided the shareholder loan is a credit balance?

If it is a personal house (i.e. intention is to live in it), then no GST is applicable - he must personally pay the costs of construction, and then, if desired, apply for the GST rebate on new residential housing. If he “hired” his corporation to provide services or materials, the corporation should charge GST as applicable to the goods or services. Whether he pays the corporation in cash (for those goods or services) or debits the shareholder loan is a separate issue.

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Easy answer is: It is a personal draw. No ITC’s. But you have to be really careful. Especially if the corporation is itself a builder. They will then try to argue that the corporation built the house.

I had a client [a builder] that despite me warning them not to keep selling his personal residence so close together because it would attract attention, was audited by the HST department for that reason. They had legitimate reasons, so they did get the principal residence exemption. But one of the houses, the lot where the residence was built on was transferred from the corporation to the shareholder after the house was built. Even though all the material and subcontractors were paid personally, they assessed them based on their determination that the corporation built the house. The corporation had to pay the HST on the increase in value and then they notified the corporate income tax department. They were lucky because the audit process of that department took so long due to COVID that the year-end became statute barred.

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With construction businesses, there is so much more that you will never know. An owner may order materials for his own home project, tell the supplier to indicate “Job X” on the invoice, destroy the delivery slip, and he’s home free. His company has paid for material for his personal residence, charged it as material expense for his company, saved corporate tax in the company, and personally saved the after-tax drawdown of his personal savings. If the corp has a cost-plus contract, the contractor/owner simply bills all personal materials AND labour to his client, who will never know the difference. Clients in the grocery or retail businesses are no different. And we all thought car salesmen, politicians, and bankers were slippery.

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Sadly accurate. :frowning: