Quote:
Originally Posted by taxbuster
This! Having discussed technical tax issues with DoubleF offline, I can tell you he's a person who is diligent and knows his stuff. I like to think I'm the same ("entitled, eh?"). The terrible reality is that H&R trains their people for 80 hours and sets them loose on the public. I'm pretty sure that DoubleF and Locke have trained, like me, for years. I've been doing tax since the early 1980s. Suspect that I know how to question people and find the interesting angles, where applicable, and they do too....something that the juniors everywhere else simply don't have the experience to do. Nor does a tax program, no matter how many questions it asks....because it's about experience and actually understanding the LAW, not some publicaction that dumbs it down.
Even if you think your situation is simple...as you age (mostly, LOL) it becomes less simple, and often provides more opportunity for creativity. It's always worth a discussion, folks...it's your money at the end of the day.
Meanwhile, this year is the worst tax year since I started. I've yet to see more than a handful of T5s, no T3s online, and many T4s even are not yet up on CRA's site. And they are ignoring it all.
Back to returns now.
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Also this. This Tax Season has been an endless grind. Information is missing or otherwise incomplete and there is no recourse. Its been brutal.
I know I say this like a broken record, but I can only make bricks with the clay I am provided.
Investments are the worst, especially with the context of the day. Are they sold? Cashed out? Gone? Or just unavailable?
For all of my clients I look at the data and analyze trends. Where is 'this?' I'd see that historically it was always there but where is it now? Is there an explanation for why it isn't there? The client doesn't have any information, CRA has no information...what am I supposed to do?
Because if I file a crap or incomplete return based on dodgy information, guess who that finger is pointed at when its the end of the day?
I want to do the best job I can for my clients. Always. But sometimes? This season I feel like I'm fighting a war on 4 fronts. I don't blame the clients. They can only provide me with what they have and rely on me and CRA to fill in the rest, but CRA has been training people to be reliant on them and their online services which, this year, have been completely unreliable dogcrap.
They dont send out information. They dont post slips and they dont answer the phone. What are we as Accountants supposed to do with deadlines upcoming and incomplete information?
I feel like Andy Dufresne crawling through that sewer pipe to freedom while someone is welding the other end closed.