Changes to Paper Filing Disempowering

Last tax season, only 7% of all Canadian tax filers filed on paper. The CRA is pushing for zero. It continues to steer the holdouts to digitized filing by adding lots of obstacles. Most recently, it is removing almost all the schedules from the tax return package it mails. This seems unfair to people who paper file because they can’t afford a computer and internet, distrust the security of online filing and those who are neither tax or computer literate. Here’s what they are up against:

On June 13, the Bank of Canada released its Financial System Review (FSR)[1]. The major risks to the Canadian economy remain the uncertain global economic condition. However, the largest domestic source of risk to the stability of the Canadian Financial system is identified as the housing market.

New Family Law Act in BC triggers wealth preservation considerations.

I recently ran across an interesting article published in Knowledge@Wharton (December 9, 2009)[1]. It, in turn, references an article in the medical journal The Lancet, which states that children born since the year 2000 in developed countries will most likely live to be 100 and, in fact, that they will be healthier than elderly people in previous generations.

Leaders of the G-8 countries, including Canada’s Stephen Harper, met in Ireland on Monday June 17th to discuss, among other things, “tax havens”.

Advisors should be aware of and discussing income replacement opportunities with their client families if disability has entered into the picture.

If you have a Registered Disability Saving Plan and are receiving disability assistance payments from the plan, a portion of these payments will be shown in Box 131 of a T4A slip.