Tax & Accounting for E-commerce Businesses

EI benefits are taxable income. Service Canada withholds income tax before each payment reaches you, and the total benefits plus the tax withheld appear on your T4E for the year. That withholding follows a basic calculation rather than your full marginal rate, so people who also worked during the year often end up with a balance owing at filing. Asking Service Canada to withhold more, or setting money aside yourself, avoids a surprise. Higher-income claimants can also have to repay part of their regular benefits through the return.

The CRA does not offer a general public chat line for tax advice. Account-specific service runs through its telephone lines, My Account or My Business Account, and mail, and the Contact the CRA page on canada.ca lists what each option covers, including automated lines for balances and benefit dates. Treat any chat window on a site that is not canada.ca as a phishing risk and never type your social insurance number into one.

Yes, indirectly. Provincial assessment authorities value a home from its characteristics, including lot size, living area, age, construction quality, bedrooms and bathrooms, and recent sales of comparable homes nearby. Your municipality then multiplies that assessed value by its rate. So a bigger lot or more finished square footage generally means a higher assessment and a higher bill, while bedroom count alone matters less than total area. Your assessment notice lists the details on record.

Yes. Property tax is a municipal charge on the property rather than an income tax, and it does not stop at any age. Relief does exist in places: several provinces and municipalities run deferral programs that let older or lower-income owners postpone payment until the property is sold, usually with interest, and some offer a grant or rebate. These are applied for each year through the province or municipality, not on your T1. Check your municipality's tax page for what is offered.

Property tax on a new build starts once the property is assessed as complete and occupiable, not at closing. Until then you are billed on the land alone, and a supplementary or omitted assessment later covers the building, often arriving months afterwards and back-dated to the occupancy or completion date, so budget for a catch-up bill. Separately, a newly built home is generally subject to GST or HST, with a new housing rebate available in some cases.

Tax makes up a large share of the retail price, and the exact share depends on the province. Three layers stack: federal excise duty on the tobacco, a provincial tobacco tax, and then GST or HST charged on the selling price. Provinces change their tobacco tax with almost every budget, so take the figures from your province's tobacco tax page and the federal excise duty rate schedule rather than from a general article.