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:

The TFSA is an excellent savings vehicle for a variety of purposes including saving for large, long term purposes or providing an emergency fund.  But there are some restrictions about the type of assets that can be held in this plan, and how often you can trade them, something advisors and clients will want to chat about to avoid a tax audit problem.

Your client has just flipped a principle residence, sold a speculative piece of property or traded frequently in his or her TFSA.  Is this a business transaction, a capital gain or an exempt transaction?  In order to determine whether a gain is of income or capital nature, there is no determinative test. However, there are some clues to follow in anticipating the tax outcome and an important precedent-setting case.

The experience at this year’s Virtual DAC Acuity Conference may just beat out last year’s – which the Globe and Mail touted as one of Canada’s most innovative virtual conferences.  Check out this sneak peek through our new speaker videos and DAC-in-a-Box program guide, and then enrol by September 30 to take advantage of early-bird tuition prices.

The reasons are varied, but 60% of KBR readers polled last month said they won’t be hiring new seasonal staff in 2022 and the prevailing reason is uncertainty. Those who will be hiring won’t be doing so before year end but are busy making training plans now.  Here are some of their thoughts on preparing for tax season 2022:

Tax pros need to stay up-to-date all year long!  Knowledge Bureau’s Evergreen Explanatory Notes should be your go-to reference for answers personal, corporate and GST/HST questions. It’s your own top notch tax research library that seamlessly links you to CRA publications and forms while providing educational notes and examples. Best of all it is included in all certificate courses or as a stand-alone subscription.  Here are the topics updated in August:

It’s a frustrating time:  the fourth wave is upon us, and soon too will be tax season 2022.  While the need to stay in quarantine hotels ended on August 9, many Canadians expended significant sums to come back to Canada from abroad during the pandemic.  Are those costs deductible?  The answer depends on the taxpayer profile and circumstances of the expenditure, according to recent CRA interpretations.