Archive for the ‘T4’ Category

It is time for the first major give-away on this site (ever).

Intuit was kind enough to contact me and send me 2 copies of  QuickTax Standard, which I will gladly give away (since I already bought a copy for myself before they sent me these (yes, irony is a good friend of mine)).

Legalities: Please note, I do use Quicktax (and Quicken) but the copies I have I paid for with my own money (more fool me), I think these are useful tools, but I am not being directly paid to run this give-away (in fact I am out of pocket because I have to ship it to you).  I do run advertising for Intuit to sell Quicktax, as you have seen over the past few weeks, but this give-away is not connected to those ads.

How can you win one of these free copies? Well, let’s first start out with some of the ground rules:

Free Software

Ground Rules

1. I assume  you are a regular reader of this blog, so all you need to do is leave a comment on this post with your e-mail address to enter (no mailing address needed yet, just an e-mail).
2. Given this software is for Canadian Taxes, you should really be a Canadian, or have a use for it (don’t just enter so that you can re-sell it on E-bay that is just scummy).
3. Your comment needs to have a good reason why you want this software (if you say you are having problems with the CRA and are thinking about going for a short airplane trip, you are disqualified), yes, I want it is a valid reason, but so dull. Also remember I have ANTI-SPAM filters on my comments, so if your comment looks like SPAM it might not get entered (or if you are a SPAMMER!).
4. If you subscribe to my feed, you will have my undying respect and your Karmic mojo will increase 3 fold (no, you don’t get another entry, but I figured I’d beg).
5. Feel free to TWEET this (remember I am on twitter as the BigCajunMan (see the button below), and if I see you tweet this, I will add another entry in for you).
6. I hope shipping this isn’t too expensive (no it is not going to go Fed Ex or overnight, it will go via Canada Post).
7. If you are associated with Intuit or are married/related to me, you are not eligible to enter.

Contest will close on Tuesday February 23rd at Midnight.

Given it is the summer and my mind is not on the world of finances today, I will reprise one of my more controversial statements which was one of the first postings I did in 2005. Hopefully my mind will swing back to the world of personal finance in a while.

So what have we learned?

1. In our specific scenario (read all of my disclaimers in my previous posts) a Single Income Family as compared to a Dual Income Family, pays:
   $7424.00
   

   Approximately MORE in taxes (that is Provincial and Federal taxes combined).
2. This means that the Single income family to NET the same would have to make over $12,000.00 GROSS more to bring home the same amount (that is just unfair). Remember the single income earner at that level is taxed at the HIGHEST level on that extra income.
3. The Dual Income family is MORE likely to be eligible for:
   1. Family allowance cheques
   2. Provincial tax credits
   3. Pay less for the Ontario OHIP TAX
4. The Dual income family gets to write off a great deal on Daycare including:
   1. Daycare costs
   2. Summer Day Camps costs

If this doesn’t convince you that the Taxman HATES Single Income families, I don’t know what would.

If you agree or disagree comment on this, I am willing to dialogue with folks on this, but if you agree that this is UNFAIR, contact your member of Parliament. Remember an election is just around the corner, and they MOST LIKELY will return your calls (as opposed to afterwards when they kind of forget you exist (IMHO)).

What can we do to fix this?

1. Introduce a FAMILY or HOUSEHOLD income concept, where spouses or live-in folk can split the income (or even level the taxes) of the house and NOT get taxed at such a high level.
   • Might promote more folks to stay at home with kids (thus not as much daycare)?
2. Overhaul the whole tax system, so that everyone pays the same thing. Here I should be careful, because they’ll just end up making dual income folks pay as much as Single income folks!
3. National Daycare moneys should go directly to the families, (ALL OF THEM) and let THEM figure out what to do with the money (ok, now I sound like Ralph Klein).

The previous points are MY Opinion only, but maybe it’s time to get more than just crazy crackpots like ME thinking about this?

If you want to compare this and have Quicktax, it’s dead easy, just create an extra return in it, and compare what you might pay if you were a Single Income earner!

Since I am doing my taxes here are some other important deductions you should remember (if they apply to you, of course) .

Transit Pass Credit

Remember if you take the bus (or your kids do), you can use the Public Transit Tax Credit . Remember if your kids use a bus pass the following as well:

Yes, you can claim the tax credit for public transit passes on behalf of your spouse, common law partner, and your children under the age of 19, to the extent that these amounts have not already been claimed.

So the expense is transferable as well, useful to know that one.

Education

Having a child in University means I can claim her tuition on my taxes, which is not a bad thing. Since this is the first year for me with this, it is important to get all the forms done right, so please read over the web page and such and make sure the student involved fills in all the forms to allow for the transfer of these credits to you. I am still muddling through this one and will keep you posted on my progress. 

The maximum tuition, education, and textbook amount transferred from a child (or fromeach child), is $5,000 minus the amounts that he or she uses, even if there is still an unclaimed part. Tuition, education, and textbook amounts that the student carried forward from a previous year cannot be transferred.

So $5000 max per child is another important point to remember. This is where the High Price of University comes back to help you a little.

Charitable Donations

Now is the time to rummage through your papers to find ALL the receipts that you so carefully stored away when they arrived (yes I am being sarcastic, about myself, I may one day take a picture of my home “work space” to show you just how cluttered and disorganized it is). Each one of these receipts is money back in your pocket, so make sure you find them all. 

I have a cross-reference method, since I use Quicken, I check in Quicken for my Charitable expenses and then go and hunt down the receipt (or send the charity a note asking for a duplicate).

Also make sure this is a valid charity, you can go on the CRA site to see which charities have had their Charity designations revoked.

Manual or Computer?

This is an interesting question I ask folks and sometimes get an interesting answer. I have been using various computer software to do my taxes ever since it was possible (I have a Math degree, not an Arithmetic degree), but I do know that Michael James on Money enjoys doing his taxes manually using forms and pencil.

Does anybody else use pencil and paper still? Do you use a service to make up  your taxes, and if so why? My taxes this year are going to be confusing, but still not complicated enough that I would pay to have someone else do it, but that may change in the future.

Having a Math Degree I like numbers and when the Census figures came out from Stats Canada yesterday I reveled in the glorious minutia of the data that that was published.

Some of the interesting tidbits published were:

• There are more than 200 different ethnic origins that we identify ourselves as. That is one hell of a lot of places and cultures to be associated with.
• We are commuting a full 0.6 KM more than we did ten years ago to get to work. What is more interesting is that in Ottawa we are well above the country wide median for commuting. I think it’s all the people from Toronto who move to Kemptville that then claim their commute is still shorter than when they lived in Toronto that skew this data.
• More of us are using public transit, which is good. I’d take the bus in Ottawa, but I want to get into work before lunch time (no direct routes from south to west).

Read through this data it’s always interesting to read and learn about.

Tax Time Folks

Remember your taxes need to be submitted darn soon, and our amigo over at the Canadian Capitalist reminds us to get our butts going on this important financial act. I have already received my refund (and spent it 2 times over), so I am done in this area.

Case Study:Why Arithmetic is Important

On the weekend I saw yet another example why math and arithmetic is important in our busy world.

We were at a fast food restaurant in Burlington, and a new trainee was working the cash. The service was very slow and the food was cold, but that is not the point of the story. When we finally got to the point where I was to pay for my food, I was told the total was $12.52 , I pulled out a $20 Bill, and a two-nie and found 2 quarters and two pennies and handed it to the young lady. She correctly pressed the right buttons and the register dutifully told her I was due $10.00 change.

This is when the problem arose. The register opened and she deposited my money into the drawer and then looked perplexed. After what felt like 2 minutes (most likely only 20 seconds), she calls over her supervisor (an older woman), and she pronounced, “I can’t give him change!”.

The supervisor looked at the tray and said, “Yes, you can!?!”.

The trainee pronounced, “… but there are no $10 bills…”. The supervisor rolled her eyes and pulled two $5 bills out handed them to me, looked at the trainee with a look of, “I am glad you are not my kid” and walked away.

Arithmetic is an important aspect to every education.

As an update, I submitted my taxes on the 15th and I got my refund on March 20th, so that is quite the speedy response. I did e-file, which I think speeds up the process, but I thought because I had waited a little later I might not get that quick a response, but in fact, I got the expected refund as did my wife and my daughter, so the taxes for last year are now closed.

The major helper for my larger than average refund were:

1. Mass transit bus pass refund
2. Donations to my Church
3. Active Child tax credit

Since those are really my only non-standard tax deductions (oh and my safety deposit box for investing). I should actually adjust my tax deduction schedule so that I don’t get such a large refund (and instead get the money back during the year), but every year things change so I like to carry a certain amount of “cushion” in case I have unexpected income (like my wife working part time or a sudden win-fall from my financial blogging ).

As a point of information I used Quicktax platinum again this year, mostly out of laziness and they had a package where I got a new copy of Quicken a Quicktax Platinum for about $100, which fit my purposes. I am not endorsing or slagging Quicktax, it worked fine for me, but I would guess other programs might have worked fine as well. I have a very “vanilla” tax return these days (don’t think I really needed the Platinum either).

End of Quarter

Yes this week is that last week of this financial quarter, so I will need to put together an updated financial statement for my wife. It is always interesting and useful to do this for me, just to see where I have made progress and areas where I need to keep working hard.

Time to also look at starting a new financial plan, given my Lenten plan didn’t quite work as hoped, but that is why pencils have erasers, mistakes happen. Start a new plan and see if this is the one that maybe gets you back on track.