Accounting and Taxes Thread

[chummer]

You're a smart dude Lockie, thanks for all your help with taxes.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by chummer

You're a smart dude Lockie, thanks for all your help with taxes.

Dude...this week? I had a client have their CPP pension classified as 'Disability.'

They're not disabled.

But because the number of months was entered into the wrong box, I cant file it. I tried just...putting it in the right place. No bueno there either. So its just in limbo.

I tried calling CRA to fix it. I suggested that the client call Service Canada to fix it.

No bueno.

So guess who isn't getting their senior's benefits because some ass clown put a number in the wrong box and isnt answering the phone to fix it?

That ####head isnt sacrificing his groceries this week. I'm sure they're paying their rent.

But guess who takes the blame? Guess who looks like the ass? Its not my fault. I cant fix it without CRA fixing it. But guess who gets the first phone call because I actually pick up the goddamned phone! And guess who isn't answering their phone. There are no question marks there because we all know the answer.

Yeah. I am not a happy camper right now.

This is rampant incompetence on a degree never before seen. This is madness.

Make me the Finance Minister. I can fix this.

[TorqueDog]

My ROC thing has been answered by a friend who used to work at CRA and knows how to navigate their stupidity.

For someone like me who uses Questrade, I have to file as though the information I have from the fund is true and what I have from Questrade's T5 is wrong. Use IRS Form 8937 to show how much of each periods distributions are ROC versus foreign income through dividends, and report it that way.

When slip matching happens in June/July and CRA reassesses because the T5 doesn't match your numbers, send them the relevant documentation that shows the ROC amounts that back up your numbers and show the T5 to be incorrect.

Just a few extra, annoying steps.

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by Locke

No.

Its actually slower.

I #### you not. Over the last month I've had tons of clients come in with pension slips, that they got in the mail, in their hands, physical documents, that are not posted on CRA's database.

And whats even better? They're usually CPP and OAS.

THE GOVERNMENT MAKES THESE!!

What are they doing with them?

Its a complete clownshow. Actually...that might be doing a disservice to clowns. I think clowns might be more efficient than that.

They hired what...30,000 new Government employees? What are these people doing?

I had to call CRA over a stupid mistake they made.

First call?

- We're overloaded and not answering new calls.

Second Call?

- You are in line, the wait time is 7 hours.

A stupid mistake. 1 number. And it was THEIR MISTAKE. And it was a dumb mistake. On a slip that THEY MADE!

But I cant file my client's taxes until it's fixed.

I know its an exaggeration but fire them all and start over.

It's okay.

Captain Carney will fix this. He's an expert businessman.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Does anyone have experience with RIF accounts and how they are handled at death when there's a surviving spouse?

Here's the situation: Dad died, leaving my mother as the surviving spouse. It appears he never named her a beneficiary, so his estate was issued a T4RIF. Basically treating this as a non-rollover to surviving spouse situation.

However, back when we wound down my dad's RIF account - they moved his assets to my mom's RIF account. Kind of like they treated it like a spousal rollover in error.

Which leads to:

- Doesn't that mean these assets will be double taxed when it comes to do withdrawals for my mom?
- How do I fix this? And with whom? TD Estates team? TD Investing? CRA?

Also adding to the confusion - My mom was issued a T4RIF, presumably for growth in my dad's RIF, so that seems to suggest they are treating her as a participant in this process.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

Does anyone have experience with RIF accounts and how they are handled at death when there's a surviving spouse?

Here's the situation: Dad died, leaving my mother as the surviving spouse. It appears he never named her a beneficiary, so his estate was issued a T4RIF. Basically treating this as a non-rollover to surviving spouse situation.

However, back when we wound down my dad's RIF account - they moved his assets to my mom's RIF account. Kind of like they treated it like a spousal rollover in error.

Which leads to:

- Doesn't that mean these assets will be double taxed when it comes to do withdrawals for my mom?
- How do I fix this? And with whom? TD Estates team? TD Investing? CRA?

Also adding to the confusion - My mom was issued a T4RIF, presumably for growth in my dad's RIF, so that seems to suggest they are treating her as a participant in this process.

I'm very familiar with these.

That depends on a whole lot of things. If you want, it would probably be easier to talk about this over the phone, I'll PM you my contact info.

[fotze2]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

Does anyone have experience with RIF accounts and how they are handled at death when there's a surviving spouse?

Here's the situation: Dad died, leaving my mother as the surviving spouse. It appears he never named her a beneficiary, so his estate was issued a T4RIF. Basically treating this as a non-rollover to surviving spouse situation.

However, back when we wound down my dad's RIF account - they moved his assets to my mom's RIF account. Kind of like they treated it like a spousal rollover in error.

Which leads to:

- Doesn't that mean these assets will be double taxed when it comes to do withdrawals for my mom?
- How do I fix this? And with whom? TD Estates team? TD Investing? CRA?

Also adding to the confusion - My mom was issued a T4RIF, presumably for growth in my dad's RIF, so that seems to suggest they are treating her as a participant in this process.

HAHAHHAHAHH TD Estates. Good luck with that!. Mind you estates is way better then a branch, don't even bother going in although they require you to go in about 75 times and the person in branch will not have a clue what to do.

My dad had a rif, I think they held back something, but I cannot remember. When locke does his taxes I will find out how much he gets raped.

[Johnny199r]

Originally Posted by Locke

No.

Its actually slower.

I #### you not. Over the last month I've had tons of clients come in with pension slips, that they got in the mail, in their hands, physical documents, that are not posted on CRA's database.

And whats even better? They're usually CPP and OAS.

THE GOVERNMENT MAKES THESE!!

What are they doing with them?

Its a complete clownshow. Actually...that might be doing a disservice to clowns. I think clowns might be more efficient than that.

They hired what...30,000 new Government employees? What are these people doing?

I had to call CRA over a stupid mistake they made.

First call?

- We're overloaded and not answering new calls.

Second Call?

- You are in line, the wait time is 7 hours.

A stupid mistake. 1 number. And it was THEIR MISTAKE. And it was a dumb mistake. On a slip that THEY MADE!

But I cant file my client's taxes until it's fixed.

I know its an exaggeration but fire them all and start over.

I spoke to an CRA agent on the phone today. I told them I have exactly one slip posted on my CRA account currently vs all of them (10-15) posted at this time last year.

I was told it was the companies who had not sent them in and it was not CRA being slow this year.

How do they explain I'm holding my physical T4 in my hand but CRA expects me to believe that my employer (Provincial government) didn't send it in to the CRA like every previous year?

I asked what do I do if I have not received my slips by April 30th? She told me to just "guess' for the amounts for my tax return.

She then said I should just overestimate how much I owe and worst case scenario I would get an "automatic refund". I asked how she could guarantee it would be automatic? If slips were added later would there an an automatic reassessment? She then said she actually couldn't say for sure and needed to go speak to her supervisor.

I just gave up.

Absolute incompetence.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Johnny199r

I spoke to an CRA agent on the phone today. I told them I have exactly one slip posted on my CRA account currently vs all of them (10-15) posted at this time last year.

I was told it was the companies who had not sent them in and it was not CRA being slow this year.

How do they explain I'm holding my physical T4 in my hand but CRA expects me to believe that my employer (Provincial government) didn't send it in to the CRA like every previous year?

I asked what do I do if I have not received my slips by April 30th? She told me to just "guess' for the amounts for my tax return.

She then said I should just overestimate how much I owe and worst case scenario I would get an "automatic refund". I asked how she could guarantee it would be automatic? If slips were added later would there an an automatic reassessment? She then said she actually couldn't say for sure and needed to go speak to her supervisor.

I just gave up.

Absolute incompetence.

Ugh. Welcome to my life and its never 'their' fault.

And the slips thing? I've heard that BS excuse a thousand times in the past couple of months.

I'm holding the physical document in my hand. Why dont you have it?

Investment slips.

CRA lets the Banks and Brokerages get away with bloody murder. No T3 or T5s posted? Dont worry boys, you'll get 'em to us eventually.

[fotze2]

Originally Posted by Locke

Ugh. Welcome to my life and its never 'their' fault.

And the slips thing? I've heard that BS excuse a thousand times in the past couple of months.

I'm holding the physical document in my hand. Why dont you have it?

Investment slips.

CRA lets the Banks and Brokerages get away with bloody murder. No T3 or T5s posted? Don't worry boys, you'll get 'em to us eventually.

I seem to remember a few years ago getting taxes in early and I got a slip after wards and they did a re-assess and were pissed off. I think you told me its best not to do that multiple times or they will come down on you. Is that still true?

[Locke]

Originally Posted by fotze2

I seem to remember a few years ago getting taxes in early and I got a slip after wards and they did a re-assess and were pissed off. I think you told me its best not to do that multiple times or they will come down on you. Is that still true?

Outside of the clusterfata this year has been, yes that would normally still be true. CRA dont like it when people change their returns over and over again.

But so many people's taxes are going to be screwed up this year its going to be amazing. So many slips missing...

[fotze2]

Originally Posted by Locke

Outside of the clusterfata this year has been, yes that would normally still be true. CRA dont like it when people change their returns over and over again.

But so many people's taxes are going to be screwed up this year its going to be amazing. So many slips missing...

As someone who worked government for 5 years, the number one thing that will piss off is work and extra work.

I remember people would phone looking for some sort of waiver from the rules and I would say you shouldn't have done the right thing and phoned because we would never catch you anyway and if we did its way less expensive than the call you just made to me.

[Robbob]

Was looking for any information on if the capital gains thing was still an issue and of course their website didn't really have an update.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Robbob

Was looking for any information on if the capital gains thing was still an issue and of course their website didn't really have an update.

I have been able to file people with Capital Gains, so at least that element has been resolved, the caveat to that though is that because of the Capital Gains confusion a lot of slips havent been issued.

So when I'm going through a Tax Return I always look.

"You had Capital Gains last year, do you still have them? Did you sell off? If so when? Whats the deal?"

And honestly? A lot of clients just hand that stuff off and dont necessarily know the answer, so my response to that is to check with CRA, but often, they dont know either.

The answer could be anything. Slip not prepared, slip could be in the ether, it might be in the mail but not posted online, there might be no slip at all, there are all kinds of potential reasons.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by Johnny199r

I spoke to an CRA agent on the phone today. I told them I have exactly one slip posted on my CRA account currently vs all of them (10-15) posted at this time last year.

I was told it was the companies who had not sent them in and it was not CRA being slow this year.

How do they explain I'm holding my physical T4 in my hand but CRA expects me to believe that my employer (Provincial government) didn't send it in to the CRA like every previous year?

I asked what do I do if I have not received my slips by April 30th? She told me to just "guess' for the amounts for my tax return.

She then said I should just overestimate how much I owe and worst case scenario I would get an "automatic refund". I asked how she could guarantee it would be automatic? If slips were added later would there an an automatic reassessment? She then said she actually couldn't say for sure and needed to go speak to her supervisor.

I just gave up.

Absolute incompetence.

A year or two ago, it started being apparent that there was something very wrong from the call centre. CRA agents occasionally saying things that were outright false. Things that you could use information from MyCRA to prove they were completely wrong. I don't know WTF is happening over there, but it's only been in the last 12-18 months or so where this type of thing started to happen.

The silver lining is that more and more clients are realizing that these mindboggling ####ed up interactions with the CRA is real. They're far more likely to be patient and cooperative vs accusatory. More and more couples are noticing completely different outcomes from transactions that are 50:50. A few clients would keep pestering me when I'd tell them that the CRA said they wouldn't be able to offer a status until 90 or 120 days had elapsed. I wasn't going to call a 3rd+ time until that time had elapsed, but they the client were free to call the CRA themselves to confirm we weren't just BSing and hadn't done anything. Quite a few actually would call themselves, then tell me their frustrations calling the CRA. Variations of stuff like:

"I owe you and your team an apology. How do you deal with these guys every day? How do they get away with that type of stuff?"
"Well, you have to ask if they have received something for your account that they're working on. You can't ask when they'll be done."
"No, no. I'm not talking about that. I was on hold for an hour, the agent sarcastically asked me if I was sure when they asked my marital status, birthdate and address. Then they hung up on me."

Originally Posted by Robbob

Was looking for any information on if the capital gains thing was still an issue and of course their website didn't really have an update.

Depends what part of the capital gains thing you mean? Most programs started to be able to file 2024 T1 with S3 a little over a week ago (not sure if it has been 2 weeks yet?). IMO the S3 thing is now just a pain in the ass that's mostly in the rear view mirror now, but I've found a few occasional bugs and issues but all were easily solvable.

However, I anticipate a substantial increase in time requirement for request for information this summer. It's getting exhausting where the CRA automatically reassesses a return and starts demanding payment, and we have to spend like 2-3 months to half a year sending/resending the information to get the CRA to return things back to what was originally filed. It's been happening more and more.

The slips issue is a far bigger issue as of right now now. I dare say for slips registered to the CRA, this year is far worse than the first year AFR was unveiled AND year 1 of the pandemic, and not by a little bit. There's going to be a #### ton of slip matching requests this summer. CRA isn't going to be lenient because of the slip registration fiasco on their portal. Nah, my money is on them doubling down and using it as an opportunity for them to add a ton of money to their coffers via interest and penalties for slips that were missed in the filings this year.

[Locke]

I've been experiencing the same thing.

Whats more though, I straight up tell my clients not to even bother calling CRA at all.

Most of what they will tell you ranges from incorrect to false to straight up make-believe. Its insane.

We have many little mottos in our office, but one of them is:

"The CRA person you get on the phone? They dont know anything. Can't fix anything. They have 1 job. To get you off the phone. By any means necessary."

You know...if you can't help then just say so. But at least don't hinder.

Giving people #### information over the phone makes my life and their lives infinitely harder.

Where do they find these people? Again...that organization needs an enema.

One of the major problems? Lack of accountability. They can tell people anything. They're like a call-centre. You can say whatever you want. You'll likely never encounter that person again and they have no idea who you are.

The number of times I've heard "Well CRA told me *insert BS here*" is absolutely outrageous.

3 times just this week clients have told me: "I called CRA several times and gotten a different answer each time!"

Why did you do that? I told you the answer. Why waste your time?

Now you've gotten several different answers. I understand the 'Appeal to Authority Fallacy' but you want to know the difference? Mine is right.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by Johnny199r

I spoke to an CRA agent on the phone today. I told them I have exactly one slip posted on my CRA account currently vs all of them (10-15) posted at this time last year.

I was told it was the companies who had not sent them in and it was not CRA being slow this year.

How do they explain I'm holding my physical T4 in my hand but CRA expects me to believe that my employer (Provincial government) didn't send it in to the CRA like every previous year?

I asked what do I do if I have not received my slips by April 30th? She told me to just "guess' for the amounts for my tax return.

She then said I should just overestimate how much I owe and worst case scenario I would get an "automatic refund". I asked how she could guarantee it would be automatic? If slips were added later would there an an automatic reassessment? She then said she actually couldn't say for sure and needed to go speak to her supervisor.

I just gave up.

Absolute incompetence.

Originally Posted by Locke

Ugh. Welcome to my life and its never 'their' fault.

And the slips thing? I've heard that BS excuse a thousand times in the past couple of months.

I'm holding the physical document in my hand. Why dont you have it?

Investment slips.

CRA lets the Banks and Brokerages get away with bloody murder. No T3 or T5s posted? Dont worry boys, you'll get 'em to us eventually.

Here's some info from the Globe and Mail on the slip issue. Sounds like the CRA tried to make some updates to their system and it caused significant issues. That shouldn't surprise anyone though.

https://archive.ph/2025.04.05-044909...sing-from-cra/

[Locke]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

Here's some info from the Globe and Mail on the slip issue. Sounds like the CRA tried to make some updates to their system and it caused significant issues. That shouldn't surprise anyone though.

https://archive.ph/2025.04.05-044909...sing-from-cra/

Another source of confusion: The tax agency clarified in February that its automatic e-mails confirming receipt of tax-slip data didn’t actually mean the submission had been accepted by the system, according to Mr. Minor. Some firms that had assumed they’d successfully filed the data found out that wasn’t the case, he added.

This one bit me in the ass.

"What do you mean my clients' T5s weren't filed? I have a Document Control Number and everything!"

And another thing...January? Really? WTF were you ass clowns doing in October/November/December?

Yeah geniuses..."Lets try overhauling the whole thing a month before Tax Season starts!" Nobody at the table kind of thought to say..."No. That would be insane."

CRA did not respond by deadline to a Globe request for more details on why the tax-slip issues persist and what it is doing to address the problem.

Typical. Burn it to ground.

[Locke]

Oh yeah, and when you use the Represent a Client service they randomly ask you to participate in a survey.

"Any addition comments on the Represent a Client service?"

Yeah.

"You ass clowns really f'd this up. Now FIX IT!"

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by Locke

Oh yeah, and when you use the Represent a Client service they randomly ask you to participate in a survey.

"Any addition comments on the Represent a Client service?"

Yeah.

"You ass clowns really f'd this up. Now FIX IT!"

Killing T1013 in July is going to be a royal pain unless they fix some serious issues with requesting authorization via rep a client.

Last year, I remember having to guess a bunch of line 15000 on your NOA from up to 4 years ago because the number CRA wanted did not match the NOA. I discovered the number could be +/- 6 from the NOA depending on the previous tax program used because these programs might inexplicably round the number to a whole number at weird intervals before continuing and allowing decimals again.

That's barely a verification question. It's more like a skill testing trick question. That better be fixed by July.