A friend reached out to me this week in a panic. She was about to file her 2025 tax return and owed $140,000 in tax, but that wasn’t the source of her concern. It turns out she had sold an income property in 2025, realized a significant capital gain and the tax on that gain was now due.
Her worry was that her accountant told her that since she owed more than $3,000 when filing her 2025 return, she would now be brought into the dreaded instalment system and be obligated to make quarterly instalments of $35,000 each for 2026, based on her 2025 tax owing.
I quickly reassured her that if this was the first time in the past few years that she owed taxes upon filing (she generally got a small refund each year), ...
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