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:

Canadians are becoming more philanthropic – giving more every year to causes that are important to them. This calculator helps in determining the tax savings (and therefore the after-tax cost) of charitable donations.

Knowledge Bureau has released its marginal tax rate calculations for 2013 now that all federal and provincial budgets have been released.

CRA’s push to get Canadians to file their tax returns electronically has been extremely successful this year, driving a million more tax filers to use EFILING services with a professional and a million more to use NETFILING. 

On May 1, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) announced that two corporations and the director of one plead guilty to tax evasion charges in the Provincial Court of Manitoba. The fines totaled a hefty $731,986.

Comedian Ray Romano once said, "Having children is a lot like living in a frat house – nobody sleeps, everything’s broken, and there’s a lot of throwing up.”  But aside from being highly amusing calamities at times, families are also powerful economic unions which are subject to fairly complicated tax rules.

Recently, the federal and several provincial governments have announced their intention of introducing Social Impact Bonds.