Personal and Business Income Tax Services

[Locke]

Originally Posted by cKy

Hey Locke, are you available to do any more returns? We experienced a family move (BC to AB) and a house sale. The lawyer in BC said we could write off a bunch of lawyer fees and relocation related things. Other than that, our returns are really straight forward.

That seems fairly straightforward, yeah, fire me a PM for my contact information and I can take care of that.

There are a number of other incidental costs to look for regarding moves like that such as the cost of a driver's license in the new location as well as Out of Province vehicle inspections, depending on circumstances.

[ozzy]

Hey Locke, question.
My wife is an Alberta Health Services employee, she paids for benefits premiums (e.g. Extended Health Care Family, Basic Life Insurance, Short Term Disability, etc)
Are these expenses taxable? and if so, where do I enter them?
She gets a letter with the yearly amounts paid for these benefits.

Thanks

[Locke]

Originally Posted by ozzy

Hey Locke, question.
My wife is an Alberta Health Services employee, she paids for benefits premiums (e.g. Extended Health Care Family, Basic Life Insurance, Short Term Disability, etc)
Are these expenses taxable? and if so, where do I enter them?
She gets a letter with the yearly amounts paid for these benefits.

Thanks

Some of it, yes, employers are supposed to have eligible expenses on the T4, but notoriously AHS is not on board that yet.

Not all medical expenses via employer are eligible and they go through the medical schedule.

[Fleury’sOTGoalCelebration]

Thanks again Locke for taking care of my taxes!

[Locke]

In honour of another Tax Season.

[Slava]

Is this just a false dawn for you? You’ve got another 6 weeks until mid-June!

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Slava

Is this just a false dawn for you? You’ve got another 6 weeks until mid-June!

They're all false dawns, I've got lots more deadlines that go essentially into October.

And then you get people who 'dont want to bother me when I'm busy' so they wait until later, all kinds of stuff.

But this is one the affects the most people, has the most constant flow of work and usually the most important and often immutable deadline.

Also I deal with a number of people that significantly depend on their Government benefits and this is how they're calculated, so thats important too.

Thats one of the elements that annoys me most about the CRA strike. If you file with someone like me, you need to pay me, I dont do this for fun or the kicks, but if you're a simple return like a senior or something? There are options for you that are cheaper or free and community associations and such organize and offer them.

And I think thats all well and good for seniors and simple returns.

However, those organizations often arent registered, so they prepare those tax returns and then mail them in for you.

Well unfortunately at the moment, theres nobody checking CRA's mail or processing mailed returns.

Whereas with someone like myself, its all automated. My returns hit the system and the computer automatically receives and processes them and generates the Notice of Assessment.

No humanity required. Other than me.

[Boblobla]

####. Email sent.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Boblobla

####. Email sent.

[Locke]

Toronto man is suing the CRA.

Stephen Real is one of thousands of Canadians affected by a massive security breach in 2020. Three years later, he can’t pay his taxes, fraudsters are attempting to buy cars in his name and he fields more than 20 spam calls a day.

In late July 2020, Canada’s tax collectors got hacked—an unknown attacker managed to log in to thousands of online accounts using usernames and passwords stolen elsewhere on the web. They hit the jackpot: social insurance numbers, phone numbers, addresses, banking information—everything needed to assume someone else’s identity, commit fraud in their name and get quick access to CERB cash. Now, some of the victims are suing the federal government in a class action lawsuit, alleging that a glitch in the Canada Revenue Agency’s system let the hackers bypass users’ security questions

my direct deposit information had been changed. I hadn’t done that. Something weird was going on.

I called the CRA right away, but of course no one was working. So I logged in to my CRA account to try to figure out what was happening. Right off the bat, I found that the deposit information for one of my three accounts had been changed from my bank, CIBC, to BMO, a bank I’ve never used.

A week after the hack, I found myself holding a CERB cheque I’d never applied for. Once again, I called the CRA, and suddenly they were questioning me: “How did you get that cheque?” I felt as if they were accusing me of being the fraudster.

After that, three different CRA employees called me, all saying different things. One said I had to send the cheque back to the CRA’s headquarters in Quebec, so I did that via registered mail. I know from my tracking that it arrived and was signed for, but even now, three years later, the CRA is still asking me where it ended up.

For six months, the CRA stopped corresponding with me via email entirely. Eventually, they began sending me pro forma notes telling me to keep changing my password and monitoring my credit history. It’s incredible—their system failed, and it’s like they’re blaming me for having bad security.

One June 1 of this year, I got a phone call from a woman working for the CRA out of Vancouver. She was on her cellphone, at home. She said she had to see photo ID to verify my identity, but it was her first week on the job and she didn’t have access to the CRA’s internal system yet. All she could find was my passport. I asked if we could do a Zoom call so she could see my face. She refused, because that went against policy. She asked if I could fax her photos of my other ID. I refused, because that was ridiculous. Who has a fax machine?

https://torontolife.com/city/my-onli...suing-the-cra/

And these people want more money and to be able to work from home.

One of the single most dysfunctional Government Agencies there are. It needs to be torched to the ground, the Earth salted and start from scratch.