A new medical expense category for the 2014 tax year is the “Personalized Therapy Plan”. In a nutshell this is what you can use to claim expenses paid to your Behaviour Consultant (BC).
In years past, I recommended that you tailor invoices for your Behaviour Interventionists (BIs) and call the service rendered as “tutoring”. This advice still holds true, but for your BCs (who always write their own invoices) you can now file your medical expenses using this new category.
There are a few conditions to claim expenses as a “Personalized Therapy Plan”:
- The plan has to be designed for someone who is eligible for the disability tax credit
- The payment is made to someone who is in the business of providing such services to unrelated persons
- The therapy has to be prescribed and supervised (in the case of a mental impairment) by a medical doctor or a psychologist
- The plan has to be needed to access public funding for a specialized therapy (as in BC Autism Funding )
Autism Funding in BC 
Personalized therapy plan – the salaries and wages incurred after 2013 for designing a personalized therapy plan are eligible medical expenses if certain conditions are met.
The plan has to be designed for a person who is eligible for the disability tax credit and the payment is made to someone who is in the business of providing such services to unrelated persons.
The therapy has to be prescribed and supervised:
for a mental impairment, by a medical doctor or a psychologist; or
for a physical impairment, by a medical doctor or an occupational therapist.
The plan has to be:
needed to access public funding for specialized therapy;
for a mental impairment, prescribed by a medical doctor or a psychologist; or
for a physical impairment, prescribed by a medical doctor or an occupational therapist.
Just a quick follow up to this…previously, the powers that be simply did not recognize the costs related to designing a personalized plan as “medical”…and this legislative change adjusts for that. It may be of interest to some then, that these costs, which were not previously deductible, may now also be an item that is covered under some private health plans such as Blue Cross, Co-operators, or Chambers Group (for example). If you are part of a funded private health plan that pays for extended health plan premiums (whether you pay or your employer pays), consider that these costs may be covered for costs, at least in part (typically, there are annual limits).
For those of you with corporations, you may also wish to help to make these costs more affordable with a private health trust OR similar such plan where you can pay into the plan on a monthly basis, and then extract funds from it to pay for various medical expenses (not just those related to autism). Typically, the payments are fully tax deductible to your corporation (or unincorporated business), and are not ground down by the 3% of net income medical expense limitation. For health trusts, I have typically used HUB Financial – easy setup and admin, but I know there are many others. Google health trust or “health spending account”
Thanks Mike.
Can you comment on what category that these costs would fall under with a private health care plan? They are usually quite specific as to what types of costs can be claimed and I don’t see see how a change in the medical expense tax credit would change that.
We have know for a while that health trusts could be a godsend for some individuals (especially those with incorporated businesses) as there is no discrimination on what can be claimed. For those of you wondering about the Private Health Services Plan (PSHP), you can refer to my page https://asdfunding.com/private-health-plan/