Website development costs follow CRA's rules for intangible property. If you're building or overhauling a site that provides enduring benefit beyond the current tax year, you capitalize the cost and claim CCA at 20% declining balance (Class 12) or sometimes 100% in year one under the Accelerated Investment Incentive. Day-to-day maintenance, hosting, domain renewals, and content updates go straight to operating expenses because they don't create a lasting capital asset. The line gets blurry with redesigns. A cosmetic refresh that doesn't change functionality or add new revenue streams often qualifies as a repair expense. A full rebuild with new features, e-commerce integration, or CRM tie-ins is capital. CRA looks at whether the work restores existing capability or creates something materially new. Most agencies invoice design, development, and strategy as one lump sum, so you'll need to split labour, licensing, and content costs if you want to expense portions separately. At Ottawa SEO, we typically see clients capitalize the initial build (design, dev, plugins, initial SEO setup) and expense monthly retainers (content, link building, performance monitoring). If you're spending $8,000 on a new site, that's capitalized. If you're paying $1,200/month for blog posts and technical updates, that's expensed monthly. SaaS website builders like Shopify or Webflow are usually fully deductible as subscription software, even though you're effectively renting the site rather than owning code. One watch-out: if you capitalize, you can't double-dip. You can't expense hosting for a site you're amortizing unless hosting is billed separately and covers infrastructure, not the asset itself. Another: if you sell the site or it becomes worthless, you may trigger a terminal loss or recapture. For most small businesses, the cash-flow hit of capitalizing a $5,000–$15,000 site isn't huge, but if you're building a $50,000+ platform, the difference between expensing and amortizing can swing your taxable income by tens of thousands in year one. Always reconcile with your accountant before filing, especially if you're claiming SR&ED or other credits tied to capital vs. current spending.