Our approach · 03 / 08
Holding companies, family trusts, and the deliberate architecture that determines how an entrepreneur’s retained capital is taxed, deployed, and eventually transferred. We treat the corporate structure as part of the portfolio, because for most of our clients, it is.
The mandate
For Canadian business owners, the corporation is rarely just an operating vehicle. It accumulates capital, holds investments, supports the family, and ultimately participates in succession. The way it is structured determines what each of those functions can do.
We work with entrepreneurs and their tax counsel to design the structure — or to refine an existing one — so that operating earnings, passive investments, family compensation, and eventual transfer are governed by a single, coherent plan rather than a series of decisions made years apart.
Structure is not abstract. It is the chassis on which everything else runs.
Separating active business operations from accumulated wealth is the foundational move. We work with counsel to design the holdco/opco relationship, the trust where appropriate, and the inter-corporate flows that allow capital to move efficiently.
Once capital is held inside a corporate structure, it must be managed under different constraints than personal wealth — corporate tax integration, the small business deduction grind, capital dividend account dynamics, refundable taxes. We manage corporate portfolios with those constraints as inputs, not afterthoughts.
A structure built for one generation often will not serve the next. We design with eventual transfer in mind — estate freezes, family trusts, the choreography of generational transitions — so that succession is not a crisis but a continuation.
What’s distinctive
Most advisors treat the corporation as someone else’s problem — the accountant’s, the lawyer’s. We treat it as ours, because the decisions made inside it determine how much of what is earned actually compounds.
We engage early with the client’s tax counsel and corporate lawyer. The structural decisions are theirs to formalize; ours is to ensure the structure aligns with the investment and family plan from day one.
Capital held within a corporation faces tax treatment unlike personal capital. We construct corporate portfolios with that in mind — account location, dividend treatment, refundable tax recovery, and capital dividend account management are part of the mandate, not separate work.
We design corporate structures with the next decade in view — not the next tax year. Estate freezes, trust establishment, and intergenerational planning are set in motion when the structure is built, not bolted on later.
No. The legal and tax filings are handled by the client’s corporate counsel and tax advisors. Enclave’s role is to design the structure with them and to manage the capital that flows through it.
A holding company separates accumulated wealth from operating business risk, allows capital to be deployed across investments without depending on the operating company’s day-to-day cash flow, and creates flexibility in how distributions reach family members. For most of our clients, it is the central vehicle in their wealth structure.
Where the family situation warrants it, yes — particularly for succession planning, multi-generational continuity, and certain income arrangements. The decision is highly specific to the family and is made with counsel.
Often. We frequently begin engagements with a structural review — surfacing inefficiencies in how capital flows through holdcos, family trusts, and personal accounts — and work with the client’s advisors to refine what already exists rather than rebuild from scratch.
It is taxed differently, distributed differently, and ultimately transferred differently. The trade-offs depend on the family’s circumstances and the time horizon over which capital will be held. There is no universal answer, only the one that fits the specific situation.