It’s that time again when you have to examine your financial life and explain yourself to the Canadian and provincial governments. It’s likewhen you were young and you were called in front of your parents and asked to explain your behavior. If you were a good boy or girl, youescaped with a pat on the back. If you were way out of line and couldn’t account for why, there were repercussions.
Tax time is the same. Big Daddy Canada and Big Momma B.C. want to know what you did for a whole year. They want a simple accounting and have laid on a lot of forms and procedures to help you give them that information. By the end of February, you should have yourmedical and charitable receipts, your T4s, and your RRSP slips. All you need then is to take that information and plug it into the forms the Canada Revenue Agency supplies.
Easier said than done! When I was young and dealt with my first income tax submission, I realized I was going to owe the government money. So I delayed sending in the brown envelope until the last moment. I still remember driving down to Canada Post on South Railway in Regina on a cold evening on April 30th and slipping my envelope into the red mailbox at 11:59 p.m. I still owed the government money and had included a letter which finished by stating: “Please advise if this is correct.”
I knew from listening to my friends that it took two months to get your tax statement returned—even if the government owed you money.So I thought that by the time they informed me, I’d have a summer job earning some extra money to pay up what I owed. And that’s whathappened.
So now I’ve completed income tax returns for over 50 years and have always done my own. Even when my income tax became morecomplicated with investments and children’s education and donations, I forced myself to learn how to complete the forms. I refused to payH & R Block and similar companies to do the financial work I knew I could somehow figure out. And until recently, I’ve always stuffed thecompleted information into the big brown envelopes and mailed them—usually in early March rather than waiting for April 30th.
A few times just before I retired and my income tax situation was rather jumbled, I tried to send the return by telefile. I would get most ofthe way through the form before being cut off by the teleprompter saying my return was too complicated. So, brown envelope it was untilvery recently.
I guess I’m a little too careful with my money because I refused to purchase a turbo tax or similar package to send my tax return by internet.I refused to use a company that wanted a portion of my money to process my return electronically. And then I came upon “Simple Tax”, acompany willing to process returns electronically at no cost. It’s a small Vancouver company that functions on the basis of small donationsafter the fact (if you wish).
Although I’ve used their forms and procedures now for three years, I still do my income tax manually first on the T1 General Tax formssupplied by Canada Revenue. Having completed all the forms on paper, come up with figures throughout, and then finally bottom-linenumbers, I then have a basis of comparison when the “Simple Tax” program starts churning out numbers. Usually, their calculations line upwith mine, so I hit the send button—and get on with my life.
