Our approach · 02 / 08
Tax-efficient structuring for Canadian families and entrepreneurs. We do not treat tax as a year-end exercise. We treat it as the framework that determines what every dollar of return is actually worth.
The mandate
A portfolio decision made without its tax context is half a decision. The same investment held in the wrong account, or realized in the wrong year, can yield a meaningfully different outcome — not because the underlying position changed, but because the structure around it did. Our role is to ensure that structure is deliberate.
We work across registered accounts, corporate vehicles, family trusts, and personal holdings as one integrated system, planning multi-year so that liquidity events, retirement transitions, and intergenerational transfers occur on terms the family has already chosen.
Tax efficiency is not a tactic. It is a discipline applied to every recommendation we make.
Identical investments produce different outcomes depending on where they are held. Interest-bearing assets, foreign dividends, Canadian dividends, and growth-oriented equity all warrant different homes. We place each where its tax treatment is most favourable across the household.
The decision to realize a gain is rarely independent of the year in which it is taken. We coordinate harvesting, deferral, and crystallization across multiple tax years — particularly around business sales, retirement, and major capital deployments.
The family is one balance sheet across multiple taxpayers. We plan income splitting where legitimately available, structure intergenerational transfers, and align corporate distributions with the personal tax position of every relevant individual.
What’s distinctive
A position that delivers strong performance and a meaningful tax bill is, in private wealth, a result with two sides. Our team plans for both at the same time, because in our experience the difference between a good outcome and a great one is rarely the investment itself.
Tax planning at Enclave is not outsourced to a parallel professional the client must coordinate with. The portfolio manager, the tax planner, and the structuring advisor sit at the same table and reach the same client.
We model the next five to ten years of expected income, realizations, and structural changes — not just the current year. Decisions made today are evaluated against the tax position they create later.
We work alongside the client’s accountants and tax counsel rather than around them. Our role is to ensure their advice and ours are pulling in the same direction.
No. Enclave is a wealth management firm, not an accounting practice. We work alongside the client’s existing tax counsel and accountants — or, where the relationship warrants it, introduce one — and ensure the planning we drive is reflected accurately in their work.
Several years before, where possible. The most consequential tax planning — corporate reorganizations, trust establishment, capital gains crystallization, lifetime capital gains exemption strategy — benefits substantially from lead time. A meaningful share of what we accomplish in the year of a sale was set in motion two or three years earlier.
Yes — and for many of our clients, it is central. Operating companies, holding companies, family trusts, and individual pension plans each have a role, and the decisions about which structure earns, which holds, and which distributes are themselves a planning exercise.
No. We work within the established framework of Canadian tax law. The discipline is in applying that framework deliberately and across many years, not in seeking arrangements whose merit depends on aggressive interpretation.
Continuously. Tax law changes, circumstances change, and what was optimal three years ago may no longer be. Our reviews include the structural decisions, not only the portfolio.