Website design costs can be capitalized, but only specific portions qualify. Under both IFRS (IAS 38) and CRA guidance, you capitalize costs incurred during the development stage when the site will demonstrably generate future economic benefits—typically e-commerce platforms, customer portals, or lead-generation sites for established businesses. Preliminary planning costs, domain registration, and ongoing content updates must be expensed as incurred. Capitalizable costs include graphic design work, front-end and back-end development, custom functionality, content management system setup, and initial content creation directly tied to launch. If you paid $15,000 for a custom WordPress build with WooCommerce integration, most of that development work would be capitalized and amortized over the site's useful life, usually 3–5 years. Hosting fees, SEO retainers, and monthly blog updates stay as operating expenses. The key test is whether the site generates identifiable future cash flows. A brochure site for a startup with no revenue history is harder to justify capitalizing because you can't prove economic benefit. An online store adding a new product configurator that will increase conversions has a clear case. You also need technical feasibility confirmation—if you're halfway through development and discover the platform can't do what you need, costs to that point may need to be written off. For tax purposes, CRA allows capitalizing website development costs and claiming CCA at 55% declining balance under Class 12 or 100% under Class 50 for certain software. This creates a timing difference between financial reporting and tax filing. At Ottawa SEO, when clients ask about capitalizing a $20,000 site redesign, we point them to their accountant with the breakdown: $3,000 discovery and planning (expense), $14,000 design and build (capitalize), $3,000 first year of hosting and updates (expense). The accountant decides based on their specific revenue model and reporting standards, but having costs properly categorized makes their job straightforward.