Filing Income Tax - 2017 (tips?)

[swak]

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I'm no accountant, but I did do all my taxes, my parents taxes and friends taxes for the last 10 years or so, and did all my own corporate taxes when I had them, so if you have any further questions i can try to answer.

Thanks for the tips!!

I'm certainly no accountant either, always have had someone else do mine though. Are these programs pretty dummy proof? Even with lots of documents (re: pension, RRSP, etc?). One thing i'm scared of if anything is the CRA.... If theres one person I don't want to mess around with, its them.

Also, I looked online and its "3% of your net income OR $2,268 (whichever is LESS)". This could be beneficial to you if you're way over that number with whatever 3% of your earnings it

[ExtraSlow]

All of the tax preparation software is pretty easy to use if you are a methodical kind of person. Most of them have some form of "wizard" type interface. I use Ufile, but that's mostly because I've been using it for a long time and so it's got all my info saved. I have no doubt the other software works just as well.

I'm sure all of them handle family taxes just fine as well. With Ufile, I put in all four of us, and it moves things like childcare, medical expenses, charitable receipts etc to the most advantageous person automatically, and it also tells you that it has done it so you can "double check" if you want. You could also manually move them to someone else if you really felt like it. You can do all this messing around and see how your tax owing (or refund) changes BEFORE submitting to CRA too, so you can mess around and not fuck anything up in real life. You don't submit until you (and the software) agree, it's easy.

[eblend]

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Thanks for the tips!!

I'm certainly no accountant either, always have had someone else do mine though. Are these programs pretty dummy proof? Even with lots of documents (re: pension, RRSP, etc?). One thing i'm scared of if anything is the CRA.... If theres one person I don't want to mess around with, its them.

It's super easy. Basically you start out with personal info like your names, addresses, SINs etc, then it would ask you questions like, are you married....then did you work, did you buy bus pass, have medical expenses etc etc, your answers spawn more questions, then asks same thing about your wife, fill all the same stuff. It's broken down into categories, so income, then deductions, rrsp etc. It's really dummy proof. I have used some other software which was a bit more complex, but stick with TurboTax mostly because I get it for free, and it has all my info, so every year you just load the last year's return and it transfer over important stuff, so easy to get going. If I have all my slips (T4, T5s etc), can do all my family taxes in like 20 minutes.

[ugotahondaeh?]

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If you spend significant time at hospitals or other medical facilities that charge for parking that parking is a medical expense too, I think. I claim it anyway.

This isn't quite true. I spend a lot of time at the hospitals for my premature twins and I was told I couldn't claim parking.

Here's a good link. https://turbotax.intuit.ca/tips/clai...l-credits-5251

[jacky4566]

Had 5k LASIK last year so the medical parts are really going to help me

[ExtraSlow]

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This isn't quite true. I spend a lot of time at the hospitals for my premature twins and I was told I couldn't claim parking.

Here's a good link. https://turbotax.intuit.ca/tips/clai...l-credits-5251

Wow, sounds like I was mistaken. Maybe I'm confused with the disability funding we get. Which pays mileage and parking for some appointments.