About a month and a half — that’s how long you have to get your taxes together and file ahead of the April 30, 2024, deadline. Good news: that’s still plenty of time to get it done.
There are a lot of reasons to do your taxes, and the process is probably simpler than you think. Easy Money talked to some tax experts — including a representative of the Canada Revenue Agency itself — about how to complete this important annual chore with a minimum of fuss.
Start by getting personal
Before you even start getting your tax info together, acknowledge that, for many people, taxes are intimidating. Interacting with the government — especially around a topic like money — can be stressful. If that’s you, it’s okay. There is help, and in many cases, things may be better than you think. As with many financial things we talk about in Easy Money, it’s better to know than to let the situation fester.
It’s important to consider your own personal situation, whatever it might be. How are you making money? Has your domestic situation changed in the past year? Where did you spend money last year? How long has it been since you last filed your taxes? The answers to all these questions are going to be key for your tax filing.
Also start thinking about what you have on hand that might be useful for taxes and what you may need to hunt down. Here’s a simple checklist of documents from the CRA and a more in-depth one from a Canadian bank, just to get you started.
“For people who are behind in tax in particular, they may fear that they do owe taxes,” says Ansley Dawson, senior manager of Financial Empowerment at Woodgreen Community Services in Toronto. But taxes are actually the gateway to many government programs, from the GST/HST credit to the Canada Dental Care Plan.
Her organization does free taxes for low-income people (for example, an individual who makes less than $40,000 per year). “For the clients that we generally support, when we actually do process the tax return,” she says, “most of the time we end up actually finding that the person is owed a bunch of money from the government.”
If you’re behind on your taxes, CRA spokesperson Paul Murphy has some advice: start catching up by doing your current tax year and filing it before the tax deadline. “It will get processed quickly,” he says, and the process of doing it will allow you to make sure your contact information and other info with the CRA is up to date, which will simplify matters.
Assemble everything you’ll need
Preparation is the key to a successful tax-filing process.Start by assembling all the documents you’re going to need, says Murphy: “Make sure you have all your information slips, like your T4 slip if you are working, your social-assistance slip, your Canada Pension Plan — whatever your source of income was.” If you are missing slips, start by contacting the organization or person that paid you, he says. If that doesn’t work, you can often get your income slips from the CRA itself, either through My Account or by calling (more on your phone options later).
Beyond your information slips, you also want to spend some time with that checklist and consider what else you might not have thought of in terms of income and possible things to claim. Keeping important receipts throughout the year is the gold-standard way of preparing for tax season, but you can still make inroads on this project if you haven’t done that. For example, you may be able to claim medical expenses, which could result in a bigger tax refund or reduce any amount you have owing. If you don’t have receipts for dental visits, glasses, or other things, you can contact your provider and ask them to send you a copy of all receipts on file for the tax years you’re working with.
While you’re at it, you can try to set up a document-saving system that might work for you next year, such as a folder where you put all your receipts. That’s especially important to start doing if you’re a freelancer, says Tova Epp, an actor and senior tax preparer for Artbooks, a Toronto-based tax-preparation company that focuses on freelance artists. She suggests keeping every single receipt from the year, if possible, because you never know what you might be able to write off during tax season. She uses a giant binder and even saves her receipts for cat litter, which is something she can’t write off. “If I have everything, I have the things I need,” says Epp. “If I don’t keep everything, we’re going to leave money on the table.”
It’s probably a good idea to make sure your CRA My Account is set up if you want to file online, as 93 per cent of Canadians did last year. The earlier you do this, the easier it will be — and My Account can be useful for the rest of this process. If you’re planning to do your taxes yourself, the CRA suggests filing online using certified tax software, so now is probably also the time to pick which software you’re going to use or run an update on the software you’ve used previously.
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Consider asking for help
If you don’t feel able to do your own taxes for any reason or if your taxes are complicated, don’t be shy about accessing help and advice to complete them. Many people pay someone to do their taxes — and there are free resources to help you, too. There’s a lot to be said for getting help: you may be entitled to benefits and credits you’re not aware of, and someone who knows the tax system might be able to help your family get the most from their return.
Hiring a tax preparer or accountant is one option used by many Canadians. Having someone who’s dedicated to getting you every dollar possible and can give you a lot of advice specific to your situation can be a real asset.
If you are a freelancer — a category that for the CRA includes many gig workers — “it’s important to find an accountant who understands your business,” says Epp, adding that many freelancers find a service that works well for them by talking with others in their professional community.
Regardless of how you make a living, low-income people — the exact amount of income varies — are also eligible for free help from local agencies that participate in the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program, which is administered by the CRA. (Woodgreen is one such agency in Toronto.)
The CRA website has a page that allows you to find resources in your area that offer in-person or virtual services. It also breaks down services by language availability. While the CRA offers help only in English and French, Woodgreen, for example, offers help in many more languages, says Dawson.
Feel free to call the CRA
Finally, you can call the CRA itself at any time. Its individual tax helpline — 1-800-959-8281 — is available in English and French from Monday to Friday (8 a.m. to 8 p. m. local time) and on Saturdays during tax season (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.).
If you want, agents can access your account and give you a whole bunch of information about your personal tax file. (You will need to answer a number of security questions to get personal information, so make sure you have the last tax return you filed on hand as well as your Social Insurance Number.) But “they can also just give you general advice and guidance on how things are supposed to be reported,” says CRA spokesperson Paul Murphy. For that advice, you don’t need to give personal information.
Murphy assured this reporter that simply making an inquiry to the CRA’s individual helpline wouldn’t flag the account for any special attention from the tax authority — something many people worry about. Likewise, both Dawson and Epp confirmed that they advise their clients to contact the CRA or reach out on their behalf if necessary.
Epp encourages her clients to try different helpline agents if the person they’re speaking with doesn’t seem to grasp the specific situation or their advice doesn’t seem right. You can also ask to speak with a senior representative. “Trusting your gut is half the battle,” she says. It’s not that help-line agents don’t want to help — they are being paid by the taxpayers, us, to do just that — but that the tax code is quite complicated, and different agents may have different areas of knowledge.
Beware of scammers impersonating the CRA
No matter where you’re at on your tax journey, it’s more than possible that, at some point, you will encounter a phone call, email, or text that purports to be from the CRA but is actually scammers looking to profit off your personal information. The practice is so prevalent — especially around tax time — that the tax agency maintains a webpage just about scams.
You can protect yourself and your loved ones, says Murphy. He suggests watching out for anything suspicious-looking in the communications, such as a request for personal information, and listening for things like aggressive phone language or demands for payment in gift cards or to strange accounts. “We’re never going to use that kind of approach with taxpayers,” he says.
If you’re still not sure, you can ask any organization on the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program list or even the CRA helpline to confirm whether the CRA is trying to reach you.
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