Splitting the work and the income at home

A large number of advisors surveyed — about 35% — work from home. And of those, many have hired their spouses in sales support roles.

To find out more about the costs and benefits of this work arrangement, we took a closer look at a couple of examples.

Fred Cacciotti, of CMG-Worldsource Financial Services Inc. in Oshawa, Ont., hired his wife, Stacia, in March 1998 to help with the administrative side of the business. “I had moved home from an executive office situation, and it seemed to make sense to hire the wife,” he says.

“It’s less stress. There’s all the administrative work to do, printing up literature, the computer work. If you can delegate that work to someone else, it is so much healthier all around. Plus, we’ve worked well together, and it meant I could spend more time with clients.”

From an income tax point of view, the set-up was pretty sweet. “We split the income I earned by filing two returns,” Cacciotti says. “I reported half the income, my wife reported the other half, and we both ended up in a lower tax bracket. That was a big advantage.”

Cacciotti says moving home has had other benefits. Although he sometimes misses the hustle and bustle of an office environment, he saves on commuting costs. What’s more, his utility bills become tax deductions.

The home office/family business isn’t for everyone all the time, however. “Moving home didn’t work when I tried it 11 years ago,” Cacciotti says. “I didn’t have a big enough clientele, and the strategy failed miserably — I was back in the office after a month. This time around, though, it was great — until the accident.”

As Cacciotti found out, having your spouse as your assistant is double jeopardy. When a car accident left Stacia with a broken neck, he added nurse and administrator to his role as advisor. “I’d say I’ve lost around $50,000 of work since the accident,” he says. “It has been up to me to do all the administration.”

And the thought of bringing a stranger into their home has deterred him from hiring an outside assistant until Stacia returns.

John Duxbury, a financial planner with Dundee Private Investors Inc. in Burlington, Ont., hired his wife, Chona, for the same income tax-splitting purposes as Cacciotti. But he has come to like the personal benefits. “I’m home playing Mr. Mom,” he says, comforting a child whose screams threaten to take over the interview. “It’s great — it gives me and the wife the flexibility to raise kids and run a business simultaneously.”

Duxbury’s home business is about to come to an end, however. Come September, Dundee is asking its advisors to set up offices. “The Dundee people have become obsessed with this Gucci image,” Duxbury says. “I think it’s part of the whole rebranding after those PR disasters with Fortune Financial Corp. last year.

“I’ve done the suit thing before,” he adds. “And I find it much more convenient to work at home. But now the Dundee heads have decided we have to clean up our image by setting up an office.”

That brings with it a whole new set of problems — and costs. Setting up a branch and staffing it is expensive, says Duxbury. And some Dundee advisors will be doing it with reduced payout. In fact, says Duxbury, when parent Dundee Bancorp Inc. acquired Fortune’s business last year, it sent him a contract cutting payout 20%. “Now they expect us to come in from home, set up an office and staff it 40 hours a week,” he says. “It’s a bit crazy.”

Duxbury isn’t the only frustrated advisor at Dundee. A Toronto planner who used to be a broker expresses intense frustration. “Here, we pay every dime for our office. We have no benefits. I really resent the firm keeping 50% of my work. Here I pay for everything,” he says.

Daniel Goodman, president of Dundee Private Investors, says the company wants to “professionalize” Dundee’s reps.

“We sent a memo around earlier this year, asking reps to be registered in branches by the end of this year at the latest,” he says. “We’ve found that in today’s markets, regulators are demanding an increased level of professionalism. Having reps in offices is one way we aim to increase the level of professionalism in the services offered.”