The past few months have been an almost perfect storm of bad financial news for Canadian retirees. The historic stock market downturn which occurred in mid-March resulted in a significant loss of value for many retirement savings portfolios, whether those savings were held in registered retirement savings plans (RRSPs) or registered retirement income funds (RRIFs).
Newsletter - Page 30 of 34 - Akler Browning LLP
Latest news and regulations from the financial world.
There have been so many announcements over the past couple of months with respect to temporary changes to individual and business tax obligations that keeping up with all of the new rules and altered deadlines isn’t easy. The good news is that, in all cases, individual taxpayers (both employees and the self-employed) are being provided with extended time to pay any income tax amounts for both 2019 and 2020.
The Canada Revenue Agency regularly carries out review activities in which taxpayers are asked to provide documentation or other information with respect to their entitlement to claimed benefits or credits.
The federal government will be providing eligible employers who have experienced a significant decline in revenues with a wage subsidy. For purposes of the subsidy, eligible employers include individuals, taxable corporations, and partnerships consisting of eligible employers, as well as non‑profit organizations and registered charities.
Individual Canadians are generally required to file their tax returns for the 2019 tax year on or before April 30, 2020. Self-employed Canadians (and their spouses) have until June 15, 2020 to file such returns. All individual Canadians, regardless of their filing deadline, must usually pay all taxes owed for 2019 by April 30, 2020.
The current pandemic has changed the lives of Canadians in innumerable ways, and the tax system has not been exempt from those changes.
Most taxpayers sit down to do their annual tax return, or wait to hear from their tax return preparer, with some degree of trepidation. In most cases taxpayers don’t know, until their return is completed, what the “bottom line” will be, and it’s usually a case of fearing the worst while hoping for the best.
The Canadian tax system provides individual taxpayers with a tax credit for out-of-pocket medical and para-medical expenses incurred during the year. Given that such expenses must be incurred at some time by virtually every Canadian, that credit is among the most frequently claimed on the annual return. Unfortunately, however, the rules governing such claims are detailed, somewhat complex and frequently confusing.
Between now and June 15, more than 26 million income tax returns for the 2019 tax year will be filed by individual Canadian taxpayers. The vast majority of those returns will be filed by electronic means, through the website of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). A minority will be filed in hard copy, using the paper return, and an even smaller number will be filed using a touch-tone telephone.
The one constant in income tax is change and consequently, while Canadian taxpayers must prepare and file the same form – the T1 Income Tax and Benefit Return – every spring, that return form is never the same from one year to the next.