You may incur expenses to pay someone, such as a superintendent, janitor, housekeeper, or maintenance worker, to maintain or operate your building.

Determining a person's employment status

The way you pay the building maintenance or operation worker affects their tax obligations and potentially yours.

To help you determine a person's employment status (employee or self-employed worker), see the page about determining employment status.

Free or reduced housing

If the person lives in your building and you waive or reduce the cost of their housing in exchange for their services, their employment status (self-employed or salaried) has an impact on how you and the worker report this benefit.

Information for workers who are considered self-employed is available on the Self-Employed People page.

As owner of a rental property, make sure to always:

• determine the fair rental value of any free or reduced housing granted to a building maintenance or operation worker when calculating the value of the taxable benefit;
• know how to, when the benefit is provided to an employee:
  • process required source deductions and contributions,
  • report the benefit on the RL-1 slip, and
  • process employment expenses;
• determine whether the value of the services provided by the worker in exchange for free or reduced housing needs to be calculated and added to your income or to the worker's income, based on their status.