If you need to pay for childcare in order to work or go to school, you can deduct what you pay for child care provided you meet certain conditions. Deductions can range from $5,000-11,000 per child and must be claimed by the parent with the lower income earned in the past year and is limited [...]
Take the time to hire a reputable tax pro and review their work carefully to help ease your worries this tax season. Be careful to select the most qualified tax professional for your own particular situation. Unfortunately, there are some advertised providers who may be out to scam you. Some ways to find the best [...]
Capital gains sales carry tax implications, and the calculation be tricky if you’ve used your home as both a primary residence and a rental property. The catch to exclude the time it was your home from your capital gains calculation is that there's paperwork involved. Typically, you need to document the original cost, as well [...]
A retiree has rental income both here and abroad. He is responsible for reporting profit made on those incomes both here in Canada and abroad. Foreign and domestic incomes from rental properties are eligible to increase your earned income, which is used to calculate your RRSP contributions room. If you have property in other countries [...]
Should you borrow money via a loan offered by Canadian banks to make contributions to your Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP). According to a recent MoneySense article, that depends. Currently RRSP loans are at a bank prime rate of 3.95%, which Heath says is advantageous. Further, most Canadian banks will lend up to $50,000 with [...]
Every taxpayer fears the day when they get a letter saying they are being audited. While some audits are random, the CRA has discovered that targeted audits are better at identifying non-compliance. Therefore, they tend to focus their audits on high-risk areas. Knowing this, taxpayers can reduce the risk of an audit by avoiding red [...]
If you have a dual Canadian/U.S. citizen citizenship, be prepared to be fully taxed like a U.S. citizen by the American government, regardless of whether you've lived there or not. Therefore, to stay on the IRS's good side, you need to be careful about where you're holding what type of investments. For instance, TFSA accounts [...]
Disagreeing with how the Canada Revenue Agency has assessed your return is a right of every Canadian. Everyone is allowed their day in court. Depending on the complexity of your case and whether you take the general or informal procedure will affect how expensive going to court can be. The general route will require a [...]
If you have investments, expect to pay taxes. Fortunately, there are four ways - almost anyone can use - to can save at tax time. First, as many people know having an RRSP allows you to defer taxes on your contribution, so you can withdraw the money at a future time in retirement at a [...]
One-third of Canadians don’t have life insurance. The main reason is that death is hard to talk about; so many people avoid it and thus don't buy life insurance or adequately plan for what will happen when they're gone. For instance, one myth is that an employer's life insurance program is adequate. Generally, it's a [...]
