The other thing you can be sure of in Life, besides Death...
That does it. From now on, I stop trying to do this myself and get an accountant.
When we lived in Boston, we had a complicated tax situation. I was frequently working as a consultant, and worked with an accountant who knew us like family, but eventually left the business (Genevieve, wherever you are and whatever you are doing, I hope you’re happy) to make sure that I could make the right deductions, amortize the depreciation of equipment purchases, and figure out when it was best to pay estimated tax vs. go nearly broke in late April.
I though that after we moved to Canada it would get simpler, and up until this past year, it was. I had mostly income from one employer, and we didn’t do much in the way of retirement investing (hey, when you don’t have much income from a previous year, you can’t sock much away in an RRSP — what used to be a 401K for us). There was no notion of a joint return here and the forms even looked a little simpler, I think.
In 2007, that all changed, and I should have realized this fact a while back, but procrastination of tax prep is something I’ve done all my life. When you’re a self-employed person and keeping your money in your account as long as possible is your goal, filing taxes early never makes much sense, unless you prefer the pleasure of not scrambling on April 14th (the tax deadline day for the US) . So, after 7 or so hours of agony, I’ve decided that it is just too damned hard to do my own return any more. I used some software, TaxTron — which was pretty hard to use, but which did the calculations, but the questions were still cryptic (CNIC? QPP/CPP pensionable earnings? Cotisations de l’employé au RPC? Huh?). I’m probably going to file an amended return for this past year’s mess after May 1, and for sure next year it will be under the careful guidance of a CGA (That’s what a CPA became after the move). I’ve learned my lesson. Now, if I could only get my Sunday refunded back to me, since I worked yesterday, albeit for the last time for a while. So much for a Spring weekend.
4 Comments to “The other thing you can be sure of in Life, besides Death...”
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West End Bob
Posted: Apr 27th, 2008 at 8:19 pm1Oh Boy.
Just one more thing about Canada that isn’t perfect, eh?
At least your tax $$ are going towards more humanitarian aspects than in the US .…
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David Drucker
Posted: Apr 27th, 2008 at 8:45 pm2Hi Bob -
I don’t think it’s a Canadian thing. It’s my attitude towards filling out tax returns in any country. As I said to Pam (who was frankly, exasperated at my near panic, despite the fact that she had located all of the documents I might need — or so she thought), I don’t mind paying taxes, but I can’t even begin to think clearly when I get one of those questions about a deduction or an income source, because I don’t understand any of it. What’s worse, there’s no ‘reward’ for me as there is for most people, who get a refund. In over 20 years of taxes, I’ve almost never gotten a refund. (I remember that we got one about 15 years ago, and spent it on a bread machine. Now that was a reward.) I almost wish there was no such thing as tax returns and filing them. Just deduct the money, show me what you you’re going to spend it on, and get on with it. The government already knows what I made, what RRSP account I opened, and what other investments (in the same bank) have made or lost money. The filing is just for the things they don’t know about (which for me, is precious little).
Ah, better to let the experts handle this. Life is too short to spend one more minute researching box 35 of form T4 or line 5 of form 1099.
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Cara
Posted: Apr 28th, 2008 at 6:12 pm3We always get our taxes prepared professionally for us and get to deduct the expenses for doing so on next year’s taxes. Since we decided to do this we’ve found we get better refunds and good advice about how to prepare for the next year. This may be useful for you because the Canadian tax situation is relatively new to you.
(By the way, you can blame Mulroney for the complexity of the tax returns. He came to office in the 1980s pledging to simplify things only to make them more complicated. Typical.) -
David Drucker
Posted: Apr 28th, 2008 at 11:23 pm4Pam thinks the instructions, at least, are big improvement from the US tax forms, since they are written in plain English. She should know, being the Tech Writer in the family.
However, I am completely convinced now that a professional tax preparer is the only way to go. I bet I get whatever we pay for it back in a refund (or at the very least, taxes we aren’t paying).
