With Greg Rozdeba (CEO, Dundas Wealth) & Martin Ochwat (COO)
You have an accountant. A lawyer. Maybe a financial advisor. But who's looking across all of it — your corporate structure, tax strategy, insurance, and estate plan? That's where the blind spots form. And in the first episode of Keep What You Build, Martin Ochwat sits down with Greg Rozdeba, President of Dundas Wealth, to break down the five tax blind spots he sees costing incorporated business owners thousands every year — sometimes hundreds of thousands — because nobody connected the dots.
Greg has spent over a decade working with business owners across Canada — from HVAC contractors and electricians to physicians, dentists, and lawyers — on corporate insurance strategies that most accountants know exist but rarely bring up. In this episode, he walks through each blind spot with real-world examples and explains why these gaps persist even when business owners have professional teams in place.
Your buy-sell agreement isn't funded — or doesn't exist. If your business partner dies tomorrow, their spouse becomes your new 50/50 partner. Most business owners don't have a funded agreement in place, and the cost to set one up is often just a few hundred dollars a month.
Retained earnings sitting in GICs or cash are eating into your small business deduction once passive income exceeds $50,000. Corporate-owned life insurance offers a tax-sheltered alternative that grows tax-deferred, doesn't trigger passive income rules, and can be borrowed against.
When you die, the CRA treats it like you sold everything. Your family inherits a six-figure tax bill they didn't plan for — on the business, the cottage, the investments. Most families don't have the liquidity to pay it without fire-selling assets.
Your CPA files taxes perfectly, but insurance-based tax strategies aren't their domain. They're aware these strategies exist, but rarely bring them up proactively because it's not within their day-to-day responsibilities. The best outcomes happen when an insurance specialist works alongside your accountant.
You might have a personal term policy that covers your mortgage and family. But nothing protects the business. Your personal insurance won't buy out your partner, cover corporate debts, or provide the liquidity your business needs if something happens to you.
One of the most common patterns Greg sees is business owners who have done well — construction firms, professional practices, service businesses — accumulating significant retained earnings inside their corporation with no plan for what to do with them. The default options are leaving it in cash (losing purchasing power) or investing in GICs (triggering passive income rules and potentially losing the small business deduction).
"Cash is king. But cash is also trash. If it's just sitting there, it's losing purchasing power. And if you put it into GICs, once you hit $50,000 in passive income, you start losing your small business deduction."
Corporate-owned life insurance offers an alternative path. The cash value inside a whole life policy grows tax-deferred, isn't subject to passive income rules, and the policy can be borrowed against for liquidity. The death benefit flows through the Capital Dividend Account and can be paid to shareholders tax-free. It's one of the most powerful planning tools in the Canadian tax code — and one of the most underused because it sits at the intersection of insurance and tax, a gap that neither accountants nor generalist insurance advisors typically fill.
Greg is clear that this isn't a competence issue. Accountants have a broad scope of knowledge, but their primary role is compliance — filing taxes, managing books, ensuring nothing is offside with the CRA. Insurance-based corporate strategies require a different licensing (LLQP) and a different kind of planning that most accounting practices simply don't specialize in.
"An accountant will tell you about the benefits of life insurance. No doubt about it. But when it comes to the forward-looking planning — structuring it, figuring out the cash value, the borrowing, how it fits with everything else — that's where you need a specialist."
The best outcomes, Greg explains, happen when the insurance advisor and the accountant work together. At Dundas Wealth, this is standard practice — they bring the accountant into the conversation from day one, and major insurers have CPAs on staff specifically to walk through these strategies in language accountants understand.
Perhaps the most consequential blind spot is deemed disposition — the CRA rule that treats all your assets as if they were sold at fair market value on the day you die. Your primary residence is exempt, but everything else is fair game: the business you started for $10,000 that's now worth millions, the family cottage, RSPs, corporate investments. The capital gains tax hits your estate, and your family has to come up with the cash to pay it.
Greg's experience is that the vast majority of business owners — especially those in their 30s, 40s, and early 50s — have no plan and no funding set aside for this. The irony is that planning for it earlier, when insurance is cheap and health is good, saves a tremendous amount of money compared to scrambling in your 60s or 70s.
The through-line of every blind spot Greg covers in this episode is the same: a small amount of planning now prevents a massive problem later. A funded buy-sell agreement costs a few hundred dollars a month. A corporate-owned life insurance policy solves the retained earnings problem and the estate problem simultaneously. And a 30-minute conversation with a specialist who works alongside your accountant can surface gaps you didn't know existed.
If any of these blind spots sound familiar, Dundas Wealth offers a free strategy call where they'll review your corporate structure and tell you — honestly — whether any of these strategies apply to your situation.
Book a free strategy call with Dundas Wealth. We'll review your corporate structure, flag any gaps, and tell you honestly whether these strategies apply to your situation.
Book Your Free Strategy CallFree. No commitment. Bring your accountant if you'd like.