Claiming Medical Expenses: Free Healthcare?

Free Health Care? Did you know that Canadians spend on average more than $1,000 on medical expenses each year? It’s estimated that government programs, via our taxes, cover about 72% of medical expenses, which means that we pay for the rest. Your clients may be over-paying on their taxes because they don’t know about medical expense deductions. 

Canada’s workplace is changing and not just on our vast, thawing land. Home-based workers are able to earn their living around the globe, and despite uncertainty, the benefits offered by recent U.S. tax reforms are attractive to Canadian businesses and professionals seeking more competitive environments. For these reasons, May 15 is an important date.

Cannabis is already on the mind of tax and financial advisors due to its inclusion in Budget 2018 and its pending legalization and accompanying taxation. But that isn’t all you should be thinking about, as it triggers an essential and controversial leadership discussion – what’s tolerable in the workplace?

Do you have clients who travelled to another city for medical care in 2017, but failed to keep receipts?  It pays to do a little research to maximize their claims. In fact, they don’t need to miss out on the medical expense savings, if you use the simplified method to file.  Here are the rules:

For many Canadians filing a tax return is the most important financial transaction of the year. Getting the best tax refund is important: not only will it put more of the money you previously earned back in your own pocket, your refund can make at least some of your cash flow and retirement worries go away. Here’s how:

Use them before you lose them! That’s the message for parents and post-secondary education students filing 2017 tax returns who are looking for provincial tuition fee rebate programs to reduce student expenses. This is especially so, since the federal education and textbook credits have been cancelled. But the tuition rebate programs are diminishing, too.

In Part 3 of this series on deductible investment expenses, we discuss costs that are not deductible – a mystery and a surprise to some taxpayers during a tax audit. Here’s more essential information to keep you out of hot water.