Add-backs: qualifying on your real Montreal income
Business-for-self borrowers across Montreal routinely show a lower line-150 net income than their actual cash flow, because good accounting minimizes taxable income. The fix is add-backs: capital cost allowance, home-office and vehicle expenses, and certain one-time deductions can be added back to lift your qualifying income with the lenders that read a BFS story properly.
Here is what that is worth, as an illustrative composite — not a client file and not a promised outcome. A sole proprietor reports $85,000 on line 150. Their return also carries $12,000 of capital cost allowance, $8,000 of home-office expense and $6,000 of vehicle expense — $26,000 of deductions that reduced tax but did not reduce the money that reached the household. Added back, qualifying income becomes $111,000.
What that buys in this market: at 4.39% over 30 years with 20% down, tested at the 6.39% stress-test rate and Quebec's property tax rate, $85,000 of income supports a purchase near $451,000. The same borrower at $111,000 supports about $597,000 — a lift of roughly $146,000 from paperwork that was already in the return.
Set that against the local number: Montreal's $835,000 median needs a household income around $153,000 at the stress-test rate on a 20%-down file. Whether the add-backs close that gap is exactly the calculation we run first, and it is the difference between a decline and an approval on a file where nothing about the business changed. We structure the file — and pick the lender — around the income you actually earn, not just the number at the bottom of your return.