New: Personal Support Workers Tax Credit Coming Soon

Personal support workers will receive billions in increased wages from federal/provincial governments in B.C., Newfoundland and Labrador and the Northwest Territories.  Those workers in other provinces will now get a raise too, but they will have to wait until filing their 2026 returns in the spring of 2027 to cash in, according to an October 27 pre-budget announcement.  Here are the details:

Post-Thanksgiving reminder: "To keep the body in good health is a duty, otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear." Buddha

Charities count on our support at year end. Not only is donating to a worthy cause the right thing to do, but digging deep to help others also makes good sense from a year-end tax planning point of view, especially for young, high-income earners.

The Distinguished Advisor Workshops soon to be running across Canada will discuss a major change in reporting or principal residence dispositions that will affect Canadians and the tax preparation broadly:  all principal residence dispositions must be reported on the tax return starting in 2016.

According to last month’s Knowledge Bureau Poll, the existing charitable donations tax credit could be more generous to taxpayers. So said 75% of the respondents, who also gave suggestions for improvement of the credit.  But the tax tail didn’t always wag the donation dog! Many respondents gave to charity for other reasons.

Tax advisors must select industry classifications as they prepare tax returns for their business-owner clients. They will be interested to know that the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), around since 1997, is updated every five years, and the most recent update was just released September 29, 2016.

It takes specialized skills to marry tax and financial planning competencies to help clients adequately fund tax-efficient income requirements. Now tax and financial advisors can certify to specialize and provide this new value-added service with the newly revised Tax-Efficient Retirement Income Planning Course.