Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
Pulling it was still the correct decision rather than drive thousands into non compliance.
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Not necessarily. The goal of the bare trust filing had to do with a global attempt at addressing money and asset laundering. This bare trust stuff is going to come back. I'd put money that there will be filing requirements for 2024 after their "discussions" and the CRA will try to play off as being a gracious entity for giving all taxpayers an extra year to understand and catch up with the bare trust filing rules.
I get what the CRA is trying to do and fundamentally I have no issues with it. But my biggest issue was how they rolled it out and how little time there was to understand who was affected, especially since there is no definition of a bare trust in the ITA. The CRA was doing very little to educate taxpayers of this new rule and unlike UHT, there were even less tools to try and understand the rules/determine if you had a filing requirement. The CPA body and whatever the legal body equivalent approached the CRA, asked for more guidance and extensions to the deadline to understand the situation further and CRA said #### you, no leniency... only to cancel it 2 days before the intended deadline and many had already filed. Guess what, is CRA going to throw away that information just because they "exempted" all those people? #### no. They're definitely going to use that info. IMO that's kinda nefarious.
I was saying that the CRA should have started with registries and insurance companies to figure out how far these arrangements might extend and then start having those companies sending notices to the taxpayers/legal owners and say that the scenario was flagged as a potential bare trust filing requirement and to file a return or go to a tax preparer to further understand the situation. Something like that. I think CRA should have extended the deadline on this vs exempted the requirement. It's bull#### they'd pseudo cancel it, when most tax preppers know they'll still implement it later after addressing a few "unintended issues".
The Canadian tax system has become brutally overly complicated. I have no doubt in my mind tax reform is coming and taxpayers will rapidly start to realize the value/difference between a tax preparer ($20-40 a return/H&R block who won't do anything for you if they screw up) vs a competent tax preparer (stands by their work) and a tax expert.
I have looked at a Czech tax returns in the actual Czech language and other than the translation of the words to ensure I have the correct understanding, the logic of how those returns work are very easy to understand. We're talking a 2-3 ish page straight forward return for individuals that basically have the equivalent of a few tax slips here, a 6-8 ish page return for those that are self employed.
IMO CRA auto filed returns are coming down the pipeline. Similar to the auto filing platforms that other countries have, I think this will be the future of Canadian tax system sometime in the near future. CRA will "autofill" a return and give you a timeframe to review. However, this autofill will potentially be disadvantageous to you where none of your deductions are factored in yet. So those that are lazy will pay less tax, those that are diligent can reduce their taxes. IMO that's fair. Also, simple returns will not have to go to an accountant or those low quality tax preparers.
However, this requires significant tightening up of rules for filing slips to the CRA on time. It's fricken 2024 and there's still major errors on slips or missing slips.