Everything determining your April is decided in December.

After December 31, most of your options close. Deductions with timing rules are locked. Repairs you were going to do anyway fall into the next year. The receipt you never photographed is gone. What's left is data entry and hoping the numbers hold.

Two hours in the last week of December replaces the April weekend. Here is the sequence.

1. Reconcile every bank and credit card account

Match the ledger to the statements, month by month, through December. Unreconciled accounts hide both missing income and missing expenses, and both cost you.

Chase the differences now while you still remember what the March e-transfer was for.

2. Confirm rent charged versus rent received

Rent goes into income when it's charged, not when it lands. Build the schedule showing rent charged per unit for twelve months, rent received, and the arrears balance at December 31.

The schedule is your line 8141 figure and your record of receivables in one document.

3. Reconcile security deposits

Deposits held are a liability, not income. Confirm the balance you hold per tenant matches your ledger and your trust or deposit account.

Then check the movements. Any deposit applied to unpaid rent or damage during the year became income in the year you applied it. Any interest your province requires you to credit is a deduction.

4. Sort the year's repairs into current and capital

Pull every repair over roughly $1,000 and decide it now, while the invoices are readable and the work is recent.

Restoration to previous condition is current. Improvement, replacement of a whole separate asset, or work bringing a newly purchased property into serviceable condition is capital. Write a one-line note on each decision. Future you will need it.

5. Build the capital additions list

For every capital item this year: date, description, cost, the unit it belongs to, and the class you expect it to fall into. New roof to the building class. Fridge, stove and furniture to Class 8.

This list feeds Area A of Form T776. Assembled in December, it takes fifteen minutes. Reconstructed in April, it takes an afternoon and misses items.

6. Decide on capital cost allowance before you file

The claim is discretionary and the amount is yours to choose. Two questions decide it.

Was this property your principal residence at any point, or might it become one? If yes, claiming depreciation costs you the exemption for those years and rescinds a subsection 45(2) election. Most software claims the maximum by default, so this needs a deliberate override.

Is your income unusually low this year, or is a sale coming soon? Both argue for claiming less or nothing.

7. Review timing on discretionary spending

Some work is genuinely optional as to timing. A December repair is deductible against this year's income. The same repair on January 5 waits twelve months.

Two rules keep this honest. The work has to be real, and the invoice has to be dated when the work was done. Prepaying a contractor for spring work does not accelerate the deduction.

8. Prorate anything with personal use

Where you occupy part of the property, calculate the personal share now on a consistent basis, usually square footage. Apply it to line 9945.

Do the same for any unit used personally for part of the year, and for the vehicle. Reconstructed kilometre logs are the weakest document in any landlord's file.

9. Chase the missing paperwork

Run the list. Property tax bills for each property. Insurance policy declarations. Mortgage annual statements showing the interest and principal split. Condo fee statements plus any special assessment notice. Utility year-end summaries. Contractor invoices, not credit card lines. Property management year-end statements.

Requesting these in December means having them in January. Requesting them in April means waiting.

10. Check the compliance dates

• Short-term rental operators — confirm your municipal licence is current and note any lapsed days. Since 2024, expenses are denied for the portion of the year a short-term rental was non-compliant, prorated by day.
• GST/HST registrants and near-registrants — check your trailing four quarters of taxable supplies against the $30,000 threshold.
• Instalments — the December 15 instalment is the last of the four. Missing it accrues interest.
• Underused Housing Tax — eliminated for 2025 and later years. 2024 was the final filing year. If you hold property through a corporation, partnership or trust and never filed for 2022 through 2024, the old obligations and penalties still stand and are worth resolving.

11. Produce the per-unit summary

Print income and expenses per unit for the year, with the combined total. Read it.

This is the ten minutes producing actual decisions. One door with three furnace calls. One suite whose utilities doubled. One property where the rent hasn't moved in three years while taxes rose 18%. The tax file is a by-product. The operating read is the point.

12. Package the file for your accountant

One folder. The per-unit summary. The combined T776-ready totals. The capital additions list. The mortgage interest statements. The deposit reconciliation. The prior year's depreciation schedule.

Accountants bill for sorting. Sorted files get quoted lower, filed earlier, and questioned less.

The dates for the year ahead

• December 15 — final instalment for the current year
• December 31 — year end, and the last day for timing-sensitive decisions
• March 31 — T5013 due where a partnership return is required and all partners are individuals
• April 30 — T1 filing deadline for most individuals, and the payment deadline for everyone
• June 15 — filing deadline where you or your spouse carried on a business, with payment still due April 30
• Six years — how long records are kept, from the end of the tax year they relate to

The whole idea

A year-end close is not tax preparation. It is the moment your books stop being a record and start being a decision tool.

Landlords doing this every December stop treating April as an event. The numbers are already right, the file is already built, and filing takes an evening.

This is the close LuxOasisOS was built around. Per-unit ledgers reconciled as you go, capital items separated from repairs, deposits tracked as liabilities, and a CRA-ready export waiting on December 31.