Unlock the Power of Online Signature Legitimacy for Accounting and Tax in Canada

How to eSign a document: online signature legitimacy for Accounting and Tax in Canada

if you're a newcomer to Canada or simply filing your income tax for the first time the process is intimidating you just don't know where to start and what to expect so in this video we will provide a step-by-step guide to filing taxes in Canada for the first time we will cover the three main aspects of filing tax and later in the video we will do a full walkthrough on how to file your income tax by yourself through an easy to use stack software so feel free to jump to the chapter that interests you the most this video is not a financial advice it's meant for entertainment and educational purposes only we highly recommend your consult an accounting professional if you don't feel comfortable filing the tax yourself but if you are keep watching so who must file taxes the answer is simple everyone as long as you live and some would function in Canada you must pay and file income tax there are some exceptions for instance International students and foreign workers who don't have a home or strong residential ties in Canada and spend less than 130 you three days in Canada normally wouldn't need to file taxes but even then in most cases they're still required to pay income tax on the portion of income earned while they were physically present in Canada if you are a newcomer who's arrived to Canada during the year even if you arrived on December 25th you still have to file an income tax report even though you've made zero income Canada's tax system is regulated by the Canada Revenue Agency also known as the CRA this is the agency that you will communicate with for all the things income tax you should create an account on their website and once you log in you can view various documents and manage your profile tax deadlines in Canada each resident is fully responsible for filing their own income tax the tax season begins end of February and the deadline to file is April 30th every year unless you're self-employed in which case your deadline to file tax is in June so let's assume that you are a regular employee you have until April 30th to file your income tax for the previous year if you've moved to Canada January this year you don't need to worry about filing tax for now because you didn't live in Canada last year if you don't file your income tax by the deadline and if for whatever reason you owe the government money you will be liable for Hefty penalties and interest on any amounts owing for that tax year personally I try to file my own income tax as early as possible in March because the sooner you file the sooner you will receive a refund if there is any so here's what you need to file your income tax your basic information like your social insurance number your address and name your dependence information like children your spouse if you have recently arrived in Canada you will need to include information from your employment before you arrive to Canada if you are already employed in Canada you will receive a slip from each employer you worked for during that tax year the slip is called T4 slip it is typically issued by your employer by the end of February it is also available online in your CRA account if you had investment or interest income you'll have to collect a T5 statement of investment income if you're self-employed you will have to provide information on all the money earned as self-employed during that year if you have foreign assets over a hundred thousand you'll also need to report them for Quebec residents you must file a separate tax return to revenue Quebec this is the only province in Canada that requires you to file two tax returns Federal and provincial you will also need to collect some information on additional expenses the government of Canada provides a lot of tax credits and refunds and allows you to deduct various expenses from your income examples of such deductions can be medical expenses education moving expenses and donations there are many more deductions you can claim and we will cover the these more in the second half of the video but make sure you check out the official CRA website for the full list of all deductions and please be advised that you need to have all the receipts and the documentation required to prove that you've made those expenses in this video we will only cover basic tax forms you can file as part of your income tax report since many individual cases are individual and this video could easily stretch for hours please make sure to do your own research to understand what deductions and form filings apply to your specific case and if you're in doubt please consult with a certified tax professional the fee for the accountant will cost you about a hundred bucks but it will save you stress and time and it will give you a better understanding of deductions which most likely will cover the cost of the Professional Services now that you have all the documentation and information ready let's jump to the tax filing walkthrough Anna over to you so let's start filing your income tax together in this part of the video I will do a walkthrough of how I usually file my taxes using wealth simple tax this software is completely free to use to file tax and personally I really like it for its Simplicity and easy user experience so you will start with opening up the wealth Simple Text website and logging in or creating an account in my case I already have an account with wealthsimple for my rrsp and tfsa and by the way if you are looking to start investing you can use the link I will leave in the description box below and you can receive a free stock when opening an account with my link so we're in now you select text and you select the year for which you want to do the report in my case it's 2022. okay here we go some information here is pre-filled because it's not the first time I'm doing it but in your case you will have to fill everything from scratch on the left side you can just look at the different menu items and easily move around within the report we start with the basic information here all standard information you will have to use your sim number and it's used to identify you for tax purposes net file access code so if you are filing tax for the first time you will not have this code so you can skip this section right away if you have file tags before then you should have your access code on your previous notice of assessment as it's stays here moving on we now fill out the Canadian mailing address phone and we get to the residence details in which province did you live by the end of the year has your residency changed this is asked in order to calculate the provincial income tax you're expected to pay this is an important question did you become a resident of Canada in 2022 let's say yes for demonstration purposes you see there is another question that pops up to consent to the fact that you're solely responsible for accurately reporting all your income credits and deductions you can hit learn more to read some more basic information I highly recommend you take your time and read through this next you will have to specify the date you entered Canada as well as the income you've earned before you became the resident of Canada so let me now go back and choose no and it takes me to the next section to fill out the marital status single marital status unchanged and I have no dependence who are dependents it's parents children and others who basically depend on you and your income moving on to miscellaneous did you own a foreign property did you dispose of property the cool thing about this interface is that if at any point you don't understand the question you can always click to learn more to answer it correctly and it creates the next feel for you to fill in based on your answer then we have a couple more pretty straightforward questions to answer climate action incentive did you live outside of this metropolitan areas let's Google what this is we can just go on canada.ca website and see that this is a tax-free amount paid to help individuals and families offset the cost of pollution and it's only available in these four provinces so did I live outside No in fact I lived in Toronto area so I do qualify for this incentive payment last year I think I got around 150 dollars as a climate action incentive payment next they ask you if you want to authorize CRA to provide your information to organ and tissue donor registry you can select what you'd like here Ontario Trillium benefit so Ontario Trillium benefit is an ontario-specific program for low-income families again if you live in a different Province you may have different types of questions here depending on what tax credit programs each province is running I do not qualify for Trillium program next is Ontario staycation tax credit and this one is really cool basically Ontario encourages its residents to contribute to the local tourism and travel within the province and if you do you can claim tax credit on the money you've spent on accommodation within the province how cool is that I will claim this I did go camping last summer and stayed at a few hotels in the province are you registered for CRA my account yes I am and if you're not yet please make sure you do so is the place where you go for anything text related it's super convenient do you want to sign up for Online mail personally yes next section is to help you autofill parts of your return you can do it through your CRA account if you have it or you can connect with your wealth simple accounts if you have investment or trading accounts with it that's super convenient alternatively you can just enter old data manually so let me quickly demonstrate what connecting to Syria looks like so you'll go through this very lengthy authentication process and once you're in it shows you all the slips available via CRA and you can select for all these to be added and filled so you don't have to do it manually and enter numbers field by field so I have the T4 form from my employer my T5 it's a statement for investment income because I own some shares in the company and other general information about my profile and next is time to start filling out different forms I would highly recommend you poke around different forms just to get an idea of what are the things that you can claim for instance education you can claim your tuition and education amounts as tax credit if you have student loans and pay monthly interest on the balance you can also deduct that from your income if your child goes to school you can use their tuition fees to get tax credits for yourself if you receive any scholarships or bursaries you have to pay income tax on that if you belong to a licensed profession like accounting or engineering you can deduct the licenses fees here Canada also has Canada training credit and you can get some reimbursement for doing some courses or upskilling and medical is another huge part of it let's step away from tax form here for a second and go to canada.ca website where you can see a full list of all the medical expenses you can deduct like Dental Services Vision Services eyeglasses and so much more alright you get the point there is a lot to keep track of and to know what to deduct it's important to know all that and understand how the system works so you can keep track on all your expenses throughout the year save receipts and be confident about what you can deduct by the end of the year remember the more educated you are about how system works the more confident you are with your finances so let's continue with my tax declaration one by one Ontario staycation Credit so in here I have to provide details on dates traveled where I stayed the HST number on the receipt and the amount paid this is what this form looks like after I filled it out so you see we did a lot of camping last year and we were able to claim deductions for it next is the employment income as you see here because I connected to the CRA account it auto populated all the necessary fields for me I just visually verify them here if you are manually entering your numbers from the T4 you've received by mail or downloaded from your employer's portal here is example of what that looks like each field has a number here and all you have to do is just to put the right amounts in the right numbered boxes next is the T5 form pre-filled and I can verify quickly and Skip right through it next is our recipe contributions so in Canada you can contribute to a registered retirement savings plan and you can reduce your taxable income by the amount you put away towards retirement it's a fantastic instrument to help you pay less tax today and put money away towards retirement in the future each year you have a deduction limit which is calculated based on your last year's income we made a video about rrsp and I highly recommend you watch it so here I just select when I've made my contributions last year you can also make contributions in the last three months of the following year and have it count towards your previous year's deductions if you'd like and sometimes your employer matches your RSP contributions helping you save twice as fast those are the best employers so here you just make sure to record every transaction you have made and this is what it looks like for me medical expenses so here I've just filled out various dental expenses and their costs here next up is Business and Professional income since we have a YouTube channel we also must declare and pay tax on any income we make from YouTube it's not a lot but still it must be reported along with all the expenses we incurred trying to make this channel grow the biggest expense this year for me was the new lens for our camera I hope you like the quality of the picture next up is donations so this year we adopted Mars and we kindly made a donation to the animal shelter where we got him from so we can claim that amount as a tax deduction all right I think that's it for me next step is to review all the reports and optimize them with simple tags automatically assesses your inputs and provides recommendations on where you can improve and red flags potential errors it also provides opportunities for claiming more deductions that I didn't think of for example here it suggests I claim work from home due to covid-19 expenses and digital new subscriptions and now that we're done with everything it also suggests to set up a direct deposit so when the refund happens it lends straight to my bank account and here you can view your total refund amount and now it's time to submit it to my CRA so I verify that all information is correct and here you go the return was submitted it usually takes about two to four weeks to receive your return remember the sooner you file your taxes the sooner you get your return which means you can invest this money sooner and make money make more money we hope this video was helpful let us know in the comments below if you like filing your taxes yourself or you have an accountant doing that for you don't forget to check out the description box below for useful links including the links to all open a wealth simple account and start investing with a free stock please don't forget to visit our Facebook group this is a great Community where we answer your questions and support each other if you're still watching now is the perfect time to click the like button below and subscribe to this channel a huge shout out to our patreon supporters thank you and we will see you in the next video take care