Remember that your safe deposit box is no longer a valid carrying fee.

Yup, whilst doing the Great American Novel also known as my tax returns for my Family I went over last year’s returns to see what I had forgotten and sure enough from Line 221 leading to Schedule 4 in my return, I had forgotten to declare my Safety Deposit Box (again). I do this every year but this is why it is important to review your previous returns to see if you are forgetting things.

This may not seem that important but each of these small things really do add up in terms of money back from your taxes. What other things have I almost forgotten over the years?

• Active child tax credits (and this year, if you are an Ontario resident, you get some there too).
• Charitable donations, in general. Many of these get forgotten and if there isn’t a receipt (or you were given the receipt last April, and you forgot to file it), you can lose out on some easy refund money.
• Moving Expenses, if you are a new grad and you moved to somewhere new to get a job, that is part of your taxes, and you should look into this. I forgot this on my first taxes (but back then we did it with pencils and forms, so I can be forgiven).
• Rental costs if you are a student (or if you rent), remember that could add up depending on how much your income might be.
• Actually filing your return!

Yup, I know more than a few folks, who have not filed their tax returns for the past few years. I am astounded that these folks haven’t, since they most likely are owed money by the government.

Don’t forget some of these easy credits or deductions and for gods sake, please file a return!

Remember that if you have enough Medical Expenses it might be worth mentioning them on your Federal Tax returns.

Last year was a bigger year for medical expenses for me because of the following:

• One of my daughters ruptured her ACL, and there was a fair amount of expenses there, including a brace and physio therapy.
• I needed physio therapy for my knee, due to me getting old
• My other daughter also had physio
• Some visits to Psychologist for testing for my kids
• Occupational Therapy for another kid

Now a great deal of this was covered under my health plan, but only up to 80% of the expense, and there was a limit to how much was paid for the year.

All of this adds up to over $7000 in expenses, but I must also then put in how much compensation I received from my Health insurance as well. It may add up to nothing, but it is something to think about.

How  was I able to know this? I checked on my Quicken, of course (sorry for the blatant plug, but it is actually the case in this instance). I put it all into my TurboTax and it was easy enough to put it all in too (another blatant plug, but stay tuned there will be a giveaway coming too).

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!