Monday, 27th March 2023 | Accounting
What is a bad debt expense, and how to calculate it?
If you’ve ever had to deal with a non-paying client or customer, you know how frustrating and costly a bad debt can be. If there’s any silver lining to this dark cloud, it’s that you can claim the bad debt expense against your income so that it doesn’t contribute to your total taxable revenue. Read on to learn about bad debt expenses and how to calculate them so you can minimize their damage to your bottom line.
What is a bad debt expense?
When a buyer doesn’t pay in full, you can make a note of the amount you’re unable to recover in your business’ financial record. This is a bad debt expense.
Unfortunately, dealing with non-paying buyers is a common problem among small- and medium-sized businesses in Canada. The best way to protect yourself is to accurately record your losses to contain the damage.
Why should I keep track of bad debt expenses?
When you invoice a buyer for their purchase, it’s recorded as a sale in your books. If you’re not paid for that transaction, your overall revenue is actually less than indicated by your accounts–and you have to pay tax on your revenue. When you record unrecovered income as a bad debt expense, you officially remove all or part of that sale from your revenue which means that you won’t have to pay tax on it. This is entirely fair and legal–you don’t pay tax on income earnings you never received.
How to calculate your bad debt expenses
There are two ways to calculate bad debt expenses: the direct write-off method and the allowance method.
With the direct write-off method, you simply charge the amount of the unpaid invoice to the bad debt expense. This removes the amount from your accounts receivable, reducing your taxable income. This is the simpler method and the most commonly used by Canadian businesses.
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