Changes to Paper Filing Disempowering

Last tax season, only 7% of all Canadian tax filers filed on paper. The CRA is pushing for zero. It continues to steer the holdouts to digitized filing by adding lots of obstacles. Most recently, it is removing almost all the schedules from the tax return package it mails. This seems unfair to people who paper file because they can’t afford a computer and internet, distrust the security of online filing and those who are neither tax or computer literate. Here’s what they are up against:

On November 2, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) announced the maximum pensionable earnings under the Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) for 2016 will be $54,900. That is up from $53,600 in 2015.

It’s November and that means Snowbirds are on the move again to Florida, Arizona, California and Texas to name a few of the favorite spots. People who ordinarily reside in Canada but spend part of the year in the United States must take caution to ensure they are not spending too much time in the U.S., which would deem them a U.S. resident for tax purposes and potentially a non-resident of Canada.

Attendees of the 2015 Distinguished Advisor Conference will have the opportunity to claim up to 15 CE credit hours from the following regulators:

Year-end tax planning, owner manager compensation, business transition planning and more were covered over the last few days at the fall Distinguished Advisor Workshop (DAW).

Knowledge Bureau’s Business Valuation for Advisors course will help an advisor become a valuable resource to their clients when considering business valuation issues.

How will the anticipated changes to the Family Tax Cuts under a new Liberal government look? We’ve crunched the numbers for you. The next Federal Budget and the 2016 indexing factors will confirm actual results; however, in reviewing estimates, we found a couple big winners: lower income families with children, and no income refundable tax credit filers with children.