Fees & Retainers

Lawyers are expensive, tax lawyers even more expensive. However, the goal of Dominion Tax Law is to make hiring a tax lawyer into a cost-effective decision.

If you wish to discuss your Canadian tax issue with us, we charge a consultation fee. If, at the end of the consultation, we believe that Dominion Tax Law can assist you, we will provide you with a written engagement letter setting out what we are going to do to assist you, what it will cost, and what the milestones in the process will be.

In most cases, we will try to establish a fixed fee to perform the requested services rather than working on the basis of “billable hours”. If you engage us, we will credit the consultation fee against any fixed fee set out.

Fixed fees provide certainty to the client, and encourage efficiency by the lawyer.

Before any work is undertaken, we will require that a retainer is paid to our trust account, usually in the entire amount of the estimate or fixed fee, plus the cost of anticipated expenses and disbursements.

We do not consider ourselves engaged to provide legal services to anyone, under any circumstances, until

1. an engagement letter has been provided to the potential client,
2. the potential client has signed and returned the engagement letter,
3. the potential client has provided us with sufficient proof of identification and other information required pursuant to our “know your client” obligations, and
4. the retainer amount specified in the engagement letter has been received and cleared into our trust account.