As most of you are aware, tax season is just around the corner, with that in mind, we thought it would be helpful to present a few ways to reduce your tax bill, and also assist us in processing your tax returns in a timely manner. With that in mind, we offer the following suggestions:
- If you have a business or a rental schedule, please itemize your receipts. Not doing so can be a very time-consuming undertaking by our staff, and we charge accordingly.
- If you have either of the above schedules, and wish to assist us with their completion, please contact us and we will happy to provide you with these schedules.
- With respect to medical receipts we would be happy if you would undertake the same exercise.
- Some type of expenses attract a request for further information from CRA more than others. Those deductions that often attract a request for further information include medical receipts in excess of $5,000. Employment expenses, and foreign tax credits originating from either T3 slips, or from paying taxes in another country. Tuition transfers from students to parents are often closely looked at as well. As such we strongly suggest you keep your medical receipts available in case CRA asks to look at them.
- Since we can not with any degree of certainly anticipate who will be targeted for these type of reviews, we do not charge extra to prepare the tax returns, which means that those who are affected by CRA requesting further information will unfortunately have to be charged accordingly. That said, we do ponder what an equitable rate for this should be.
- With respect to timing, most of the time, bring in your tax return early is better than later. CRA is moving towards tax preparers being able to download slips which means that if clients have misplaced slips or aren’t sure how many they have, this can serve as a way to check that all slips are accounted for.