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:

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.

An employer may provide employees with the opportunity to purchase shares in the employer’s corporation at some future date, but at a price that is the current market price when the option is granted. 

We continue our Synthetic Dispositions series this week with a look at the short sale of similar or identical property.