The CPAs who ensure the show goes on
Every day, Amanda Ram, a CPA and CFO of the National Ballet shown above, makes her way to her downtown Toronto office. But instead of suits and briefcases, she’s greeted by lace, tulle and sequins. “Ballet costumes look beautiful on stage, but trust me, they’re even better up close. They line the halls of the building, and the designers’ sketches are on the walls,” she says. There are jewel-encrusted bodices, gold-embroidered fabrics, dramatic headpieces and feathered tutus from ballets like Jewels and Swan Lake. “Of course, the dancers are in the building, so if I get stressed out, I can always pop downstairs and watch a rehearsal. There’s nothing quite like being surrounded by this level of creativity.”
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Ram cut her chops at Ernst and Young, and other more traditional accounting roles, before a colleague recommended her to the National Ballet in 2019. As an amateur dancer and lifelong arts aficionado, she leapt at the opportunity. “I was quite emotional about the transition, because it felt like I could finally blend my career with my passion,” she says.
Now, Ram is one of a handful of CPAs working in Canada’s arts and entertainment sector—a niche industry that comes with unique challenges alongside its significant perks. After all—romantic notions of artistry notwithstanding—when it comes down to brass tacks, taxes must be filed, budgets balanced and long-term financial health meticulously planned to make sure artists can keep doing what they do best.
Throw in the complexities of cross-border tax regulations, royalties and the often unpredictable nature of artistic endeavours, and you have a recipe for pandemonium without a strategy-minded financial professional in the picture. But whether they help individual artists navigate their finances or drive a full-fledged arts organization like the National Ballet, accountants in creative industries can expect a regular dose of uncertainty as they weather the ups and downs.
Donna Branston
“Creative people, in my experience, tend to have a bit of chaos floating around them,” says CPA Donna Branston, a partner at the B.C.-based accounting firm DMCL. Branston specializes in accounting and broader financial management services for musicians and others in the entertainment industry, including Bryan Adams and the iconic Canadian pop duo Tegan and Sara. “Clients need us when they need us, so we don’t necessarily work regular hours. I was recently in Hawaii, and all my clients knew that I was available for emergencies, but otherwise on vacation. A VIP client FaceTimed me while I was at the beach. I answered, and it was important, but I think that solidified at least one boundary for me—I don’t want to see clients while wearing a bathing suit.”
Having to be on-call, Branston says, means that CPAs who want to work with entertainers have to be flexible. Very flexible, in fact. Whether you’re on a beach in Hawaii or tucking in to a good book, there’s no rest for the weary—if a panicked tour manager calls late night with questions about the pay structure for an ongoing show, waiting till Monday (or even morning) is usually not an option. “You have to be adaptable, and genuinely a great multitasker, because your day can and often will change on a dime. To do well as an accountant in this industry, you have to have a passion for it,” says Branston.
Fortunately, that passion can be rewarded with insider access to a creative world. Branston has been backstage at more shows than she can count. And perks aside, if you’re passionate about the arts, knowing that your work helps keep the show on the proverbial road is rewarding in itself. “It feels good to know that we can offer artists support, and the peace of mind that the financial side of their business is taken care of," says Philip Goldband, a managing partner of G&G Partnership, whose Gold Entertainment Accountants division serves the cultural sector.
For Goldband and his team, working with creative people has proven to be an exercise in rapid response. Because while CPAs in traditional sectors see their fair share of exigencies, crisis management is routine for those who work in entertainment and the arts. “How is the entertainment client different from the regular client? A lot of the time, the first time they call a CPA is during an emergency,” says Goldband. “New clients often sign on after receiving letters from the CRA because they haven’t filed taxes for years, even when they’re otherwise very successful,” says Goldband. “You have to know how to handle that.”
In one case, a voice actor who had departed Canada as a tax resident and spent several years working in the United States had moved back to Canada permanently—and due to a serious health condition, found himself well behind in both Canadian and U.S. tax filings. Facing the potential for heavy penalties for non-compliance, as both the CRA and IRS were requesting filings, a solution was urgently needed.
Philip Goldband and Oksana Bernatonis
The Gold team assessed all the necessary filings and reviewed corporate structures in both countries, which had been mishandled by a previous U.S. accountant. For the U.S. personal returns, the team used streamline protocols to avoid large penalties. And since it was not efficient to operate a U.S. corporation while being a tax resident of Canada, the former was dissolved.
It took a lot of proverbial elbow grease, but the firm’s U.S. and Canadian teams collaborated to prepare all the necessary documents and, with the help of the Voluntary Disclosures Program (VDP), aimed to avoid as many penalties as possible. A response from the CRA is forthcoming, but at the very least, the actor has a bit of breathing room to focus on his career.
“I’ve had clients literally cry from panic in my office, which you don’t see nearly as often on the traditional accounting side,” says Oksana Bernatonis, managing partner at Gold Entertainment Accountants. “We've seen too many amazing artists, who otherwise do really well for themselves, unfortunately not be able to sustain their craft because they are not in compliance. The earlier an artist engages a good accountant, the more likely it is they can focus on art instead of stressful tax regulations.”
With many Canadian artists touring or otherwise making an income south of the border, understanding tax regulations in multiple jurisdictions is an unavoidable part of the job. At the beginning of Branston’s career, she confidently decided that, as U.S. taxes are not her favourite subject, understanding them in depth would not be her specialty. But the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry—it quickly became clear that expertise in U.S. tax regulations is a prerequisite for working in this field. For instance, the IRS requires a 30 per cent withholding tax on payments to non-US artists performing there, which has become more strictly enforced over time, even affecting small performances. Without proper planning, artists can be exposed to overtaxation .
No matter the issue, soft skills, while always important for CPAs, are perhaps even more crucial in the entertainment industry. “We find that more so than with traditional accounting clients, clients in this world don’t often have a strong understanding of tax regulations. This sort of thing tends not to be an area of interest for creative people,” says Goldband. “And so, you have to be able to explain things in very simple terms.”
Soft skills also come in handy when dealing with a client who is non-compliant in more ways than one. Recently, an actor contacted Gold Entertainment Accountants for assistance filing personal and corporate returns spanning more than ten years. “We spent two years unsuccessfully trying to get the required information from him, and we are normally very good at that part,” says Bernatonis.
The actor finally hired a manager who sent the information over, and it turned out that his total taxes owing, not including penalties and interest, was something to the tune of half a million dollars. His corporation had never even registered for HST, despite far surpassing the threshold. “We filed all his outstanding returns, including a VDP for HST. His filings are now up to date, he was able to secure his highest paid contract ever in the U.S., and now he can focus on his career,” says Bernatonis. It turns out that a devil-may-care attitude only worked for James Dean—actors in the real world get distressing letters from tax authorities like everybody else.
An individual who hasn’t filed their taxes for an almost impressive period is one form of crisis that demands exceptional soft skills—but what happens when a crisis hits an entire organization? Ram joined the National Ballet in 2019 and experienced about a year of normal operations before the Pandemic—as did the reality of steering a mission-driven arts organization through an emergency. Ram’s strategic skills as a CPA help buoy the organization at the best of times, but this was a new level of pas de deux with financial uncertainty. She focused on protecting staff and artists, negotiating pay cuts with unions and staff, securing government aid, and strategically managing cash flow to ensure the show could go on (when restrictions abated). Even then, limited audience capacity made for a constant balancing act to cover full costs without full revenue.
“Soft skills are super important for CPAs coming into this type of an environment, because the mission is at the forefront of everything that we do,” Ram says. “It's crucial to establish a positive working relationship and bring non-financial people to the table to discuss potential solutions. In my role, the ability to negotiate, communicate and collaborate is just as important as technical skill.”
For Ram, bringing everyone to the table is also about strategizing to enhance diversity and inclusivity—not only as an inherent good, but as an important way to engage potential new audience members. Diversifying the board, dancer and choreographers, and making sure the ballet is a fun and welcoming place, is a priority for Ram and her team. Ballet isn’t a stuffy, exclusive affair anymore, and Ram is working to help it finally shed this outdated reputation.
Ikram Zouari
It’s safe to say that nearly every arts organization in the country suffered some sort of fallout from the pandemic. The National Arts Centre in Ottawa, whose finance department is headed by CFO Ikram Zouari, CPA, was no exception—and, she says, the effects have lingered. There’s been a global decline in sales, with what looks like a permanent 20 per cent drop in attendance. That’s likely down to a combination of the public’s shifting priorities amid inflation and economic instability, a dicey international political climate, and a shift to a digital or hybrid art world. For Zouari, managing this polycrisis environment comes down to the high-level strategy CPAs are routinely trained in.
On a typical day, Zouari may build financial models, carefully monitor expenditures to assess long-term viability, pull data to enhance impact reporting for donors and other fundraising sources, or collaborate between departments and other institutions to help close the gap between rising costs and declining attendance. “To build a vision for the future, you need a combination of soft skills and big picture thinking in addition to financial expertise.”
Like many CPAs in the arts, personal interest inspired Zouari to enter the sector. Her father was a painter and calligrapher, and she’s always had a deep love and appreciation for the artistic world. For all its benefits, passion is essential in this challenging field. Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum, so it’s no surprise that the sector needs dedicated CPAs to keep the curtain up as much as it needs talented artists.
And even though art and accounting are not necessarily obvious counterparts, Zouari thinks there is more symbiosis between them than one might think. “I personally think that accounting is a type of art,” she says. “There’s the art of analyzing and interpreting financial information. The art of data storytelling, and explaining what drives the ratios and financial key indicators. CPAs in this field have to read behind the numbers. Ultimately, there is a very close connection between art and finance.”