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Sure, it’s bad for the people who have a hard time understanding their taxes and can’t afford an accountant, but small businesses like Intuit and H&R Block need the millions of dollars people spend dealing with this bullshit.
Look at socialist hellscapes like Ireland. Pay As You Earn taxes?! Communism!!
The excuse that any system that creates jobs should be kept alive for that reason is ridiculous. What is your response the the AI and robotics industry that continues to eliminate jobs until there are none left? How will our "system" handle that?
I'm pretty sure that was sarcasm. I hope.
Yes.
I used to work for Intuit and had to quit. I couldn’t take working for a place that (imo) made the world worse for people so they could make line go up.
Sorry about that. I'm getting way too angry at how stupid people are.
I feel you. It’s hard to not.
But at the same time, we have to try understanding people and empathising with them if we want to bring people back together.
The world has been intentionally divided to make us easier to control. The only way to counter that is to reunite, you know?
I understand people all too well. My belief is everyone is justified in their approach to life by either genetics or experience and should be free to express and act on these within the confines of the law. But I also believe that to disguise our opposition to some beliefs and to not call out something as "stupid", which is a very general term that can be ascribed to a variety of demographics, is wrong. I believe in peoples right to free speech, but question the freedom to lie (what is a lie?). I admire and support the efforts to empathize with all people but I also recognize that if those efforts leads to the loss of the battle for freedom and equality then it must be treated as a secondary consideration.
If you are going to insult peoples beliefs, how do you see people reacting to that?
Will they suddenly realise their error, or will the wall up, get defensive and dig in?
So what are you trying to achieve?
There is no way it wasn't sarcasm, right? Like 99% sure
Oh won't someone think of the job creators.
It'd be interesting to know how much money Intuit & co are spending on lobbying here in Canada. I have a sneaking suspicion they're going to start trying to shut this down. Just like they did in California.
Intuit (and any other company allowed to offer NETFILE services) is required to offer a free tax filing option for individuals. The problem is they're allowed to upsell as much as they want, so you have to be careful that they'll absolutely try to sell you some service that you don't need (i.e. audit insurance on a basic T-4 only filing).
For the most part, I have not had a problem using the free service, though you do need to know how to fill out any forms that aren't part of their default wizard.
That being said, if your tax filing is 100% just confirming information the government already knows, then that should just be done for you. I would expect to get correspondence via MyCRA/lettermail (ideally both) that lists what forms from whom were submitted, their final calculations and a notice that it would be finalized on April 30th unless a supplementary return is filed (i.e. un-filed income, deductions etc).
Like, some of it is just silly; to claim disability on a dependent, I have to submit a form that the government sent me, which was submitted by the doctor who provided the diagnosis - to the government. It's not even that department A isn't talking to department B; it's a form submitted to CRA!
YES!
They already have all the absolutely required information in various government systems. All we Canadians should need to do is file additional items if we have them. If we have nothing additional to file we shouldn't need to do anything.
I'm currently using Canadian based Wealthsimple.
Edit:
They'd also need to have a way to inform Canadians when they owe an amount and allow a period for us to confirm the information is all correct before the payment due date. Not sure how they'd put that into place. Can't always depend on Canada Post....
For most Canadians I'd say they have all the info they need. They should make it as painless as possible for as many as possible.
For most Canadians I'd say they have all the info they need.
True. The only people they wouldn't necessarily have all the info for are self-employed or people doing casual labour, or maybe people working remote for foreign companies.
The main thing is dealing with deductions for charitable giving, tuition, rent payments, etc.
This definitely ain't meant for these people (I'm one of them, it often takes me a few hours to calculate what my income is after currency conversions, and the impact of all related fx transactions). Commissioned salespeople it definitely won't work for. Nor would I think it would work for people who hold foreign real estate or significant foreign assets, or anyone that's had significant asset disposals in the past year, and probably not even people who hold second homes that are rental properties. I'm not even entirely sure about something as simple as a couple of close principal residence sales with the necessary flipping calcs that would need to take place (usually pretty straight forward, but the details can also make it be pretty complicated).
If you've got a T4 from your employer, and few deductions, then giddy up. That probably still captures quite a lot of people.
Absolutely. They do it anyway, so why do I bother?
There isn't a year that goes by where I don't file my taxes, submit them, and then two months later get an email saying "we've audited your filing and you made an error." Sometimes it's that I get more of a refund that I thought. Sometimes it's that I have to pay more. So it's not malicious thing or anything like that. But either way there is no recourse to their decision, so what was the point of me doing it first in the first place?
If you know what I owe, or what I'm owed, just fucking tell me. And if I'm a financially responsible adult, I'll have an idea about whether or not they're accurate, grumble about it if their not and then move on with my life because they won't do anything about it anyway. (You know...the Canadian way)
Thanks for sharing. Didn't take long to fill out.
I concur. Took me 3 minutes tops.
The way I look at it, if we get automatic filing it’s like giving many people a national half-day holiday.
Also one less American cultural norm.
That's a great way of looking at it.
Anyone wondering about the authenticity of the survey link - it's linked on canada.ca so it seems legit.
It doesn't ask for any identifying information either, so it seems pretty safe.
Yeah. Just province, household income and age group.
Automatic tax filing is really only being considered low income people. Shame. Anyone who has T4s should be able to have taxes filed automatically.
Pretty cool, I always wondered why some poorer countries in the Caribbean have automatic tax filing, but we don't.
Yes!! JFC if you have T4s your taxes should automatically be filed!! I’m so sick of wasting a month each year on doing taxes, when they already know how much tax I’ve paid and what I make at my job. Self employed is another story. But for those with T4s, please file my taxes automatically!!!
I'm still pretty ambivalent about it. I'm cautiously optimistic I would say.
One common thing that I see, a lot, is dropped T4 data between your employer and the government. Especially box 40 for some damn reason. You should always double check your T4 with what the government has, and I think this will get lost here. There's going to need to be significant data validation improvements for this to work, and the minute I hear the words AI (which we haven't thus far), I'm out.
Also banks are notoriously slow with filing T4RSPs and T5's, they are required by law to have it done by the deadline, but more times than I can count I've seen discrepancies, and that usually ends in you not getting the amount of deduction that you should be (and it could get lost in translation between year's).
Again, cautiously optimistic, but what about these scenarios? For you and me, it's probably minor differences in the rare circumstances something pops up, but you start multiplying that by a bunch of people, and that means an adjustment needs to be found and corrected. All by the agency that's currently mind boggled and doom spiraling over figuring out how to get enough people to pick up the phone.
I mean I hate doing taxes, I want everything to be automatic, and yes it's a pain in the ass to have to pay someone, but sometimes all that effort might save you some cash in the end, right? Sometimes automatic could maybe cost you. Maybe you don't care (and if you were to be someone who would otherwise be a tardy filer, then you shouldn't care).
Yes they should have auto tax filing for those whom it fits. Also, universal basic income would help to return us to the social cohesion we once had. It would reduce crimes related to being poor or destitute. Hell, this would even result in less wage money going to the police as there is always more peace when there is no financial pressure on the citizenry.
Thanks for this link!! Filled it out and let my family know about it
Awesome! Thank you!
Yes