For my Canadian taxes this year, I tried using software program to file my return. A couple years ago, we had bought tax software to file, but it wasn’t really worth the money as my family has a pretty simple tax situation. Being cheap, the next few years I just did all my calculations in Excel so I could update my forms without a lot of calculator punching.

This year, I found a free program to do my Canadian taxes and used that to file. In fact, I’ve been sitting on my taxes since late February. In March, I kept waiting for all my receipts and forms to arrive. I wasn’t really sure when they had all been received, so I held off from submitting my return. Then I was waiting for Tommy to create the budget for dq, although because we had a loss this year, we possibly could have carried it over to a later year.

So the process dragged on and I didn’t file my taxes until late in April. This wasn’t an optimal situation because I was getting all the tax I paid back in my return (yay for being poor). But, it was good for two reasons. First, Tommy’s accountant said that we should claim an income even if it’s negligible because $0 sets of audit warning bells, and 2) Peter mentioned that RAs (Research Assistantships, but Fellowships in CRA-talk) do not have to be counted as part of income this year. When I heard about #2, I was happy because that would reduce my income to almost $0. Of course, Waterloo decides to screw me over again and counts my RA as employment, so I get no benefit.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: taxes, uwaterloo.ca