Time’s Up: CRA’s 100 Day Mandate for Improvement

After years of frustration on the part of tax professionals and taxpayers alike, the Finance Minister ordered the Canada Revenue Agency to clean up its act in 100 days. Specifically, the improvement plan was to run from September 2 through December 11. Finance Minister and Minister of National Revenue, Francoise-Phillippe Champagne instructed CRA to fix “unacceptable wait times and service delays.” Time’s up this week and CRA has released an update on progress. What gets measured, gets done. Let’s see what CRA’s metrics show. 

The end of November marked the end of Financial Literacy month and with it our poll that asked: Putting focus on spending less than you earn is more important than earning more than you spend. Do you agree?

December is the month to supply employees with their 2014 TD1 Tax Credit returns, which determine how much tax will be withheld from periodic pay cheques throughout 2014. 

The Bank of Canada (the Bank) has warned Canadians that an unsolicited email scam has falsely claiming to originate from the Bank has been circulating.

Are you wealthy? How do you measure your answer? Many people don’t believe that word belongs to their situation until they sit down and actually map out their personal and family net worth – total assets less total debt. But wealth has a lot to do with your state of mind around financial decisions.

Canada announced in its 2013 federal budget that international tax evasion was at the top of the list of concerns for our nation and that capturing revenue from such sources would help alleviate the tax burdens on other citizens.

This is the first year I am required to withdraw some money from my RRIF account. However, that amount along with CPP and OAS will bump me up to almost $90K. I am probably not eligible to contribute to my spouse's RRSP, so are there any other ways to reduce my tax burden to CRA?