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. 

Cathy Mason, of Calgary, on her experience taking the T1 Professional Tax Preparation – Intermediate course:

There are more millionaires in the world than ever, according to Capgemini’s World Wealth Report 2017, and those whose portfolios are overseen by wealth managers achieved robust gains of 24.3 per cent on average — far exceeding benchmark performance.

The majority of Canadian financial professionals and business leaders say the government is not doing enough to support post-secondary education, according to an online poll conducted by Knowledge Bureau, Canada’s premiere national institute for excellence in financial education. These findings come despite generous, but underutilized, support from the RESP, Canada Education Savings Grants and Canada Learning Bonds.

The Canada Revenue Agency completed nearly 112,000 audits during fiscal 2016-17, according to a government report on recent efforts to crack down on tax cheats. If you or your clients are chosen for an audit, there are a few best practices that can help you through the process.

“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” — Oprah Winfrey

Canadian portfolio manager and 25-year veteran of the financial services industry, Douglas V. Nelson, CFP, MFA, CLU, CIM, has been awarded the 2017 DAC Client Innovation Scholarship Award, to be presented at the Distinguished Advisor Conference in Kelowna, B.C., November 5-8. The award was co-founded by Knowledge Bureau and Franklin Templeton Investments in 2016.