For me, tax season begins when I get the Tax software (this year I started fiddling around about 2 weeks ago, using some estimates). It really starts (however) when I get my T4 form.
For folks like me who are working stiffs the T4 is the tax form that describes your income and taxes paid, etc.. Your employer must prepare this for you to pay for the previous tax year. Once I get this form, my Tax preparation becomes much more concrete and tangible, because this form gives me the real numbers that cover 85% of my tax information (effectively).
What Other Forms Do You Need?
The real danger I have is once I have my T4 I start getting giddy and want to send my return in, without trying to remember the important forms that may not have shown up yet, such as:
- Any and all of my charitable contributions, which do tend to take a while to show up (I usually check out my Quicken log to get an estimate of those).
- Receipts for tuition that I might have paid for my daughter’s university (yes, some schools do take their sweet time to get those receipts out).
My wife’s tax forms from the Government, for the UCCB, this year it doesn’t matter since we didn’t receive it, but I almost forgot that income one year.(no longer applicable).
There are many other things that I must patiently wait for, and as a final double-check, I go over my previous year’s tax form (which I print as a PDF when I e-filed), making sure I didn’t forget anything from the previous year. This doesn’t catch any new income that I may have forgotten about, but it has stopped me from making many big boo-boos over the years.
This year’s major gaff (so far), is that I forgot to include my Pension Plan payments in my estimated values.
I don’t do any RRSP day-dreaming these days, but I do try out Turbo Tax’s RRSP estimator for fun (I don’t have money lying around to put in RRSPs, but it is still fun to try it out).
If all the income has something like T4, it will make my life a lot easier. The truth is that I am starting some small business that is losing money. But yet, there are so many book keeping and calculation to do.
I really wish I could max out my RRSPs. Sadly the PA takes care of that pipe dream.
I get all giddy too but have to restrain myself as I know I don’t have all the necessary receipts yet… I hope they come soon. I want to get my taxes done and over with!!
Our T-4s finally arrived this week. I am excited to get the taxes done and submitted. Hopefully we don’t have to pay tax this year but I suspect we will due to our side income.