Tax Filing Trivia for the Start of Tax Season 2024

February 19 is the first day CRA accepted 2023 tax returns to begin the 2024 tax filing season.   How much will the average tax refund be?  How must will the average taxes payable be?  How many tax returns will be filed?  How many will be nil returns?  A review of those final filing stats for 2022 can help to anticipate what the 2024 tax season will look like.  Here is some tax filing trivia to kick off tax season 2024. 

Questions:

1. How many tax returns were filed in Canada in the 2023 tax season?
2. What was the average tax refund for returns filed for tax years prior to 2023, from February 9, 2023 to January 15, 2024?
3. How much money, in total, did the federal government refund?
4. How much money, in total, did the federal government collect in balances due?
5. How much was the average balance due for the period from February 9, 2023 to January 15, 2024?
6. How many Canadians filed nil returns?
7. How many Canadians are delinquent in filing their tax returns?
8. Did a higher percentage of people file their tax returns lateduring the pandemic?
9. What percentage of Canadians used EFILERs to file their tax returns in tax season 2023?
10. How many self-prepared electronically filed returns, or those preparing 10 or fewer returns for friends and family, are there in Canada?

Bonus question:  how many tax returns are paper filed in Canada?

Answers:

• Over 32 million tax returns were filed in Canada from February 9, 2023 to January 15, 2024
• The average tax refund for the 2022 tax filing year was $2262
• The government refunded $41.7 Billion to Canadians
• The government collected $61.4 Billion from Canadians
• The average balance due was $8028!
• Over 6 Million nil returns were filed from February 9, 2023 to January 15, 2024 – that’s 18.75%.
• Of the total returns processed, 1.792,515 Million Canadians filed their returns late last year; that’s 5.7%. But that’s less than in 2021 when the number was 1.858,332 or 6%.
• Did more people file late during the pandemic?Turns out the answer is no - the same 6% figure showed up for non-filers in the pandemic year of 2020.
• The vast majority of Canadians used EFILE services – 59.6% or over 19.1 Million returns.
• The number of people who used NETFILE – self-prepared electronically filed returns, or those preparing 10 or fewer returns for friends and family – amounted to 32.5% or close to 10.5 million returns.

Bonus Question:  Only 7.7% of Canadians file paper returns; come because they have to. And the File My Return, phone filing system was only used by about 52,000 Canadians (0.2%).

How to Make a Difference.  Millions of Canadians of all income levels need help filing their tax returns.  It’s not too late in the year to become a DMA-Tax Services Specialist.  Start with your first professional certificate course in the program – it takes about 30 hours and can all be done online.