Personal Tax Returns in Vancouver

April 30 for most people, and June 15 if you or your spouse or common-law partner carried on a business — but a balance owing is due April 30 either way. So the June date buys filing time, not payment time: an unpaid balance is already late on May 1 even when the return itself is not. The one carve-out is a business whose expenditures were primarily the cost or capital cost of a tax shelter investment, where the return is still due April 30.

Every outstanding year has to be filed, and whether a taxpayer comes forward before the CRA makes contact changes the relief available. The late-filing penalty is 5% of the balance owing for the year plus 1% for each full month the return is late, to a maximum of 12 months — it doubles to 10% plus 2% a month, for up to 20 months, where the CRA charged a late-filing penalty for any of the three preceding tax years and has since issued a formal demand to file. The Voluntary Disclosures Program can cut penalties and interest, but relief is discretionary: the CRA says it is not required to grant relief and decides each application on its own merits. An application has to reach back to a year at least a year past its filing due date, be complete for every year involved, and include payment of the estimated tax owing or a request for a payment arrangement — coming forward unprompted is normally worth full penalty relief and 75% interest relief, against 25% of the interest once CRA contact has prompted it.

A review is not an audit — the CRA states that selecting a return for review does not represent a tax audit. Reviews run through the year under the pre-assessment, processing review and matching programs, and most letters simply ask for the receipts or documents behind something claimed on the return. A reply goes in within the time frame the letter gives, quoting the reference number in its upper right corner, either by mail to the address shown or by submitting the scanned documents online; if a receipt cannot be found, the CRA asks for a written explanation or a call to the number at the bottom of the letter. Which program a particular letter came from is only identifiable from the letter itself, so it is worth having it read before anything is sent — and once we hold online authorization, that reply goes out from us as your representative.

Yes — the rent and the expenses against it go on Form T776, Statement of Real Estate Rentals, which lists the address of each property you rented and carries any capital cost allowance you choose to claim. Rental income is usually income from property rather than from a business: the CRA treats basic services such as heat, light, parking and laundry as property income, while adding services like cleaning, security or meals may mean you are carrying on a business. That line matters for the calendar, because the June 15 filing date is tied to carrying on a business — someone renting out a suite is normally on April 30. If the property is owned with someone else, each owner generally reports their share as a co-owner; the CRA says co-ownership of a rental property as an investment does not make a partnership.

It depends on where the year actually lands — outside Quebec, instalments are required when net tax owing is more than $3,000 for the current year and was also more than $3,000 in either of the two years before it. A reminder is the CRA's own estimate built from past returns, and the CRA says that if the year's net tax owing comes in at $3,000 or less, instalments are not required for that year. The dates are March 15, June 15, September 15 and December 15, with farmers and fishers instead paying once, on December 31. Paying a self-calculated amount instead is a bet on the estimate: payments made in full by the due dates carry no instalment interest or penalty unless the estimated amounts turn out too low, and instalment interest compounds daily, with a further penalty where that interest passes $1,000 for the year.

Your slips, last year's notice of assessment, and records for anything a slip doesn't capture. Authorizing us for online access to your CRA account — either by adding us under “Authorized representative(s)” yourself, or by confirming the request we submit through Represent a Client — lets us pull the slips, RRSP deduction limit and carryforward amounts the CRA already holds, so nothing already on file has to be hunted down on paper. Form AUT-01 is the paper route, but it authorizes offline access by phone, mail, fax and in person only, and the CRA notes it does not provide online access to account information. What still has to come from you is what the CRA never receives: rental income and expenses by property, self-employment books, medical and donation receipts, tuition amounts, and the documents for a property or investment you sold during the year.