Tax Change: Advise Taxpayer About Short-Term Rentals

Taxpayers who own a residential property and rent it out must be aware that income reporting is required in most cases.  Further if the rental was for periods of less than 90 days, expenses to offset that income could be restricted.  These Short Term Rental (STR) rules are new for the 2024 tax year.  Here’s what you need to know based on recent directives from Finance Canada and the CRA, which includes a brief reprieve for some STR owners in 2024:

Budget 2022 proposes to provide an additional $1,200 million over five years, starting in 2022-2023 to increase both the investigation and prosecution of entities committing tax evasion. The additional funding will increase CRA’s efficiency and ability to combat tax evasion, which is something it already takes very seriously according to recent examples.

Act now! Today is the deadline for early-bird tuition savings. You don’t want to miss this opportunity to join Canada's most prominent tax educators, best-selling authors and technical experts for a comprehensive budget, retirement & estate planning update on May 18, 2022.

On occasion, a business will be selected for a review of their books and records by the CRA.  This is called a payroll examination, and the goal is to ensure compliance with respect to deductions and remittances, for your payroll account.

In an anticipated move intended to help rein in inflation, the Bank of Canada announced an increase of the benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point to 1% this morning. It’s the biggest increase from the central bank in more than two decades.

The April 7, 2022 Federal Budget introduced a new tax deduction for employees which will be in effect starting on January 1, 2022, assuming Royal Assent will be received. With the exception of some simplified filing opportunities, most employee deductions will require receipts and a signed tax form from the employer.  It is expected this will be no different for the new Labour Mobility Deduction. Here are the details to know:

Paying a surrogate to bear a child is illegal in Canada.  Yet, the Nova Scotia government recently introduced a new refundable tax credit for surrogacy-related medical expenses, a first in Canada.  The federal government, too, proposed a similar provision in the April 7 Federal Budget, to provide for tax relief for reimbursements paid to the “patient”, the surrogate.