Written when online submission of your taxes was a very new thing. It is now de rigeur but still has some useful hints. Tax time is all year round now too!
I submitted my entire family’s tax returns online, and boy, is it easy these days. I remember the early days, things were a little arcane and painful, but hey it worked for me, and I wasn’t complaining. In the early days, I would print out a “hard” copy of my return just in case I got audited (which is a good thing to do), but things have changed since then, so let’s run through a quick checklist of things to remember when you are submitting your tax return online:
- Check ALL of the data that you have input from all your slips and your personal information. I had a problem submitting my daughter’s return, and when I finally did go back over the data, I had her Social Insurance Number input wrong! Luckily, the CRA upload interface caught it and said, “HEY, STUPID!” (OK, it didn’t say that, but it got the point across).
- Make a hard copy of your return(s) for your records. In my case, I now print it in PDF format and then back up the software and the returns on a CD so that I have a complete copy. Printing a copy is never a bad idea as well.
- Make sure you have waited for all of your receipts! Inevitably, I forget and some receipt appears, one year it was a HUGE capital gain, that I then had to do a supplemental return for, so be careful folks.
- Read the messages from the program. It might find you something you forgot about. Once, I forgot to input the cost of my safe deposit box in the Carrying Charges portion, but my software program warned me about it!
Oh, and if you are getting money back, send your return in as SOON as possible, but if you owe money, you can submit it early; just mail the money you owe later!
Watch out for online errors from the CRA, too.
