Empowering Professional Services Businesses in Canada With Affordable Tax Filing

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.

Payroll treats each cheque as though you earned that amount every period, so a bonus, overtime, retroactive raise or an extra shift makes the cheque look like a higher annual income and more tax comes off it. A change in pay frequency, a new TD1, or a taxable benefit added mid-year does the same. CPP and EI stop for the year once their maximums are reached, so take-home often rises later on. Your return reconciles the total.

Only if you are authorised first. The CRA will not discuss an account with anyone who is not on file as a representative, even a spouse or adult child. The taxpayer can add you online through My Account, or you can submit an AUT-01 with their signature. For someone who cannot sign, the CRA needs legal documents such as a power of attorney or estate paperwork. Authorisation can be limited to view-only access.

The CRA does use text and email for limited purposes: one-time passcodes when you sign in, and notifications telling you that mail is waiting in your account. It does not text you a refund offer, a payment demand or a link asking for banking details, a SIN or a card number. Never tap a link in an unexpected message; open canada.ca yourself and sign in to My Account to see whether anything is actually outstanding.

Realty tax is another name for property tax, the annual charge a municipality levies on real estate using an assessed value and a rate set in the municipal budget. It funds local services and education levies, and it is billed by the municipality, not the CRA. Owners of rental or business property deduct it against that income, while property tax on a personal residence is not deductible. Arrears follow the property, so buyers check them on closing.

No. The fuel charge applies to fuels, not tobacco. Cigarettes carry federal excise duty, a provincial or territorial tobacco tax, and GST or HST on the shelf price, which is why tax makes up most of what you pay. Duty and tobacco tax rates move with budgets and some federal rates are adjusted annually, so check the CRA excise duty rates page and your province's tobacco tax page rather than an older figure.

Several taxes stack on a litre: a federal excise tax on gasoline, a provincial fuel tax that varies by province, a local transit levy in some regions, any carbon levy that applies there, and GST or HST charged on the total, so sales tax is calculated on the other taxes as well. The share of the pump price that is tax therefore depends on your province and on the day's crude and refining costs. Each province publishes its own fuel tax rate.

An employer does not pay the employee income tax, it withholds and remits it. What the employer bears on top of wages is its matching share of Canada Pension Plan or Quebec Pension Plan contributions and its share of Employment Insurance, which is a set multiple of the employee premium. Provincial employer levies can apply as well, such as the Ontario employer health tax or the Quebec health services fund. Everything withheld and matched goes in with the payroll remittance.

The buyer pays, and the money changes hands on closing through the lawyer or notary handling the transfer. Land transfer tax is provincial, so the name and the calculation differ: a Toronto buyer pays a municipal land transfer tax on top of the Ontario one, while Alberta and Saskatchewan charge registration fees instead of a transfer tax. Several provinces offer first-time buyer relief. The seller carries their own costs, including commission.

Basic groceries are zero-rated, meaning no GST or HST applies to staples such as bread, milk, eggs, produce, meat and unprepared ingredients. Tax applies once a food falls outside that category: candy, snack foods, carbonated and sweetened drinks, bakery items sold in small quantities, and anything prepared or heated for immediate eating. Provincial rules can add or remove tax on top of the federal treatment, so the province of supply matters.

Yes. When wait times are long the CRA phone system offers an automated callback: you enter a number, hang up, and an agent calls when your place in the queue comes up. The option only appears while the queue is long, so a quiet line will simply connect you. An agent working an open file can also arrange a return call. Keep the number you gave free, and expect the call from a CRA line rather than the one you dialled.

Keep anything that supports a figure on your return: slips, deduction and credit receipts, and for a business every purchase invoice, sales record, bank and credit card statement and mileage log. Records must be kept six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to, so the records behind a 2025 return are kept until the end of 2031. Digital copies are acceptable provided they are legible and complete. Destroying records earlier needs written permission from the CRA.