Podcast: Automatic Tax Filing - Will It Work?

Last week Taxpayers' Ombudsperson François Boileau  tabled his annual report:  In Pursuit of Better Service: Taxpayers Deserve More.  once again, it was nothing short of scathing, as CRA received its highest number of complaints in the last three years.  Calling our “completely nuts” Income Tax Act a potential barrier, he is nonetheless pushing for automatic tax filing as a potential solution.  A new episode of Real Tax News with Evelyn Jacks & Friends available next week, will feature guest Gillian Petit, Ph.D. - author of a great report, Welcome News for Lower-Income Canadians, but There’s More to Do - which takes a deeper dive.  Consider the following:

Introducing the Knowledge Bureau News Network – a new financial education environment everyone can engage in and in the case of professional tax and financial advisors, to start earning CE/CPD Credits, too. Check out the three networks to choose from. There are absolutely no pre-requisites; just a desire to master the news and what it means to the decisions you need to make about your finances, your business and your influential role in your community. Here’s how it works:

Missed Today’s RWM™ & Virtual Campus Orientation? The Recording is Now Available! Continue the conversation. Revisit the insights. Take the next step in your professional journey.

Consider how common out of pocket medical expenses are and how many millions of people miss claiming them. We overview a few of those “dark horses” below.

Can Canadians build wealth in the current economic environment? Over the longer term?  After taxes?  These are important questions anytime but particularly at election time.  The traditional way to build wealth for Canadians families has been to buy a home, pay it off and even leverage the equity to borrow money to invest in the financial markets.  These wealth building exercises occur over a lifetime.  But today, new generations are building wealth differently.

Provincial budgets have now been tabled from every province but one: Ontario.  This includes those recently delivered by Newfoundland & Labrador on April 9 and PEI on April 10. Neither province introduced tax hikes, but both placed emphasis on helping businesses in their province. Check out the details:

According to a Statistics Canada report on March 31 labor market trends, job losses are starting to occur in Canada, for the first time in 26 months, with the unemployment rate ticking up to 6.7%.  Some of this can be attributed to tariff uncertainty.  But, amongst the 1.5 million unemployed people in Canada, 44% lost their jobs due to a layoff in the last 12 month and that means, doing a T1 return for 2024 will require specialized knowledge in reporting severance.  Here’s a primer on what to know: