Paying income tax instalments in 2020 (August 2020)
Most Canadians who participate in the paid work force do so as employees. Consequently, they receive a regular paycheque from their employer and they pay income taxes by means of amounts deducted from...
Claiming the Canada Child Benefit (August 2019)
Raising children is expensive and, in recognition of that fact, the federal government has, for more than half a century, provided financial assistance to parents to help with those costs. That assist...
More debt … and more interest (February 2019)
The fact that debt levels of Canadian households have been increasing over the past decade and a half can’t really be called news anymore. In particular, the ratio of debt-to-household-income, which...
The tax scam that won’t go away (October 2018)
Tax scams have been around, probably, for about as long as Canada has had a tax system. They also have a tendency to proliferate at certain times of the year — often during tax return filing and ass...
Deciphering your Notice of Assessment (June 2018)
By the middle of May 2018, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) had processed just over 26 million individual income tax returns filed for the 2017 tax year. Just over 14 million of those returns resulted ...
Protecting yourself from tax scams (July 2017)
As the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) notes on its website, new tax scams are devised every single day of the week. And, despite the cautionary tales which appear frequently in the media and the warnings...
Keeping up with your taxes for 2017 (July 2017)
By now, halfway through the 2017 tax year, almost all Canadian individual taxpayers will have filed their income tax return for 2016, and most will have received the Notice of Assessment which summari...
Understanding the OAS “recovery tax” (May 2017)
Older taxpayers who have recently completed and filed their tax returns for 2016 may face an unpleasant surprise when that return is assessed. The unpleasant surprise may come in the form of a notific...
Flying south for the winter (November 2016)
Once daily weather reports begin to include wind chill factors or frost warnings, the thoughts of many Canadian turn to the idea of spending part of the Canadian winter somewhere much warmer – most ...
