About the Firm
Built on a single premise.
Axial Accounting was established to deliver something increasingly difficult to find in public practice: sustained, attentive, structurally sound advisory — delivered by a practitioner with direct accountability for the outcome.
The firm serves a deliberately focused client base. Owner-managed businesses, professionals with complex tax positions, individuals navigating significant financial transitions — each engagement is selected for alignment, not volume. This is a practice built on depth, not breadth.
The name itself reflects the approach. An axis is a fixed reference line — the point from which everything else is measured. At Axial, that reference line is the client's actual position: financial, structural, and strategic. Every recommendation is oriented from that centre.
Stephen Douglas Thompson
CPA, CA
Managing Partner
Stephen Douglas Thompson founded Axial Accounting to practice public accounting the way he believes it should be practised — with direct engagement, structural rigour, and a perspective that extends well beyond the current fiscal year.
His career spans public practice and advisory work across a range of industries, with particular depth in owner-managed businesses, professional corporations, and high-net-worth individual planning. He holds the Chartered Professional Accountant and Chartered Accountant designations and is a member in good standing with CPA Ontario.
Thompson's approach to client relationships is defined by two commitments. The first is availability — clients of the firm work directly with the Managing Partner, not through layers of delegation. The second is continuity — understanding a client's full financial architecture, maintained over years, produces advisory outcomes that episodic engagements cannot.
He established Axial with the belief that the profession's greatest value lies not in compliance alone, but in the interpretive, structural, and strategic work that surrounds it. The firm is the embodiment of that belief.
Principles
Direct Accountability
Every engagement is led by the Managing Partner. There is no handoff to junior staff, no rotation between associates. The person who designs the strategy is the person who executes it and stands behind it. This is not a scalability model — it is an accountability model.
Structural Thinking
Tax positions, corporate structures, compensation strategies, and transition plans are not isolated decisions. They are interconnected systems. Axial approaches every engagement with an awareness of the full architecture — because a decision that optimises one element while destabilising another is not a solution.
Considered Pace
The firm does not operate on urgency manufactured by inattention. Deadlines are met because the work is planned well before they arrive. Clients receive the full measure of time their circumstances require — because the cost of a rushed decision in tax or corporate structure is almost always greater than the cost of a considered one.
Professional Standing
Axial Accounting is a public accounting practice registered in the Province of Ontario, Canada. The firm maintains professional liability coverage and adheres to the standards of practice established by CPA Ontario and the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada.
All assurance, review, and compilation engagements are performed in accordance with Canadian Auditing Standards (CAS) and Canadian Standards on Review Engagements (CSRE) as applicable.