Expert Tax Accountants in Selkirk

Paper returns go to the CRA tax centre that serves your province or territory of residence, not to one national address. The correct address is printed in the paper return package and listed on canada.ca under mailing addresses for individual returns, and it differs for non-residents and for business returns. Filing electronically is much faster: for the 2025 tax year the CRA aims to issue a refund on an online return in about two weeks, against a considerably longer standard on paper.

Most enquiries are settled without a phone call in My Account, My Business Account or Represent a Client, where assessments, balances, slips and CRA mail all sit. When you need a person, use the enquiries line for your programme from the contact page on canada.ca, and have your social insurance or business number plus a figure from a recent return ready for identity checks. Written enquiries go to the tax centre named on your notice of assessment.

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.

Manitoba residents pay federal income tax plus Manitoba provincial income tax on one T1 return, with the provincial share set by its own brackets and credits. On purchases you pay federal GST plus the Manitoba retail sales tax, charged as a separate provincial tax rather than blended into a single harmonised rate. Property owners also face municipal property tax and education levies. Rates move with each provincial budget, so confirm the current ones before pricing or budgeting.

An exempt supply is a sale that GST/HST does not apply to at all, and the supplier cannot claim input tax credits on the costs of making it. Typical examples are long-term residential rent, most financial services including interest and insurance, many health and dental services, child care, and most services provided by public sector bodies. Exempt sales also stay outside the $30,000 small-supplier threshold test, which for 2026 counts taxable revenue only.

Online filing for the 2025 tax year opened on 23 February 2026 and stays open until 29 January 2027. You can gather documents and prepare the return earlier, but the CRA will not accept an electronic return before it opens, and employer and investment slips are often not all issued until late February or March. The deadline was 30 April 2026, or 15 June 2026 if you or your spouse were self-employed, with payment still due 30 April.

Yes. Tips are income whether they arrive as cash, on a card or through an app. Card tips normally pass through the employer, so they are usually controlled tips: run through payroll, subject to deductions and included on your T4. Tips customers hand you and you keep are direct tips, still taxable, but reported by you because no slip shows them. Keep a daily record either way, since the CRA can ask you to support the amount.

A pension paid out as a lump sum is taxable in the year you receive it, added to your other income and taxed at your graduated rates, with tax withheld when the payment is made. That withholding is only an instalment, so a large payment can still leave a balance owing in April. A direct transfer of an eligible amount to an RRSP or RRIF defers the tax until withdrawal. Retiring allowances have their own limited transfer room.

The basic Canada Education Savings Grant pays 20% of your RESP contributions, to a maximum of $500 a year per child and $7,200 over that child's lifetime, and those are the 2026 figures. Twenty per cent of $2,500 gives the full $500. Unused grant room carries forward, so a catch-up year can draw up to $1,000. Grant can be paid up to and including the end of the calendar year the child turns 17, but for the years the child turns 16 and 17 it is paid only where the plan already has a savings history — at least $2,000 contributed and not withdrawn before the end of the year the child turned 15, or at least $100 contributed in each of any four earlier years — so opening an RESP late can forfeit the last two years of grant.

Largely no. PST in British Columbia and Saskatchewan and RST in Manitoba are retail sales taxes, not value-added taxes, so PST paid on business purchases is generally a cost rather than a credit. Relief comes from claiming an exemption at the time of purchase, such as goods bought for resale or certain production equipment, not from a return. Quebec's QST, 9.975% for 2025 and 2026, is different and is recoverable through input tax refunds, Quebec's equivalent of input tax credits.

All of it. No threshold lets cash go unreported: tips, side jobs, weekend work and cash sales are income the moment you earn them, and the CRA can reassess unreported amounts with penalties and interest. Keep a log of dates, amounts and payers, and deposit takings so records reconcile. Self-employed cash earnings go on Form T2125 with your T1 return; cash tips earned as an employee are employment income, not business income, and belong on the other-employment-income line of the T1 instead.

The CRA charges compound daily interest on an unpaid balance starting the day after the payment deadline, at the prescribed arrears rate it sets each quarter. Because that rate is reset quarterly, check the current figure on the CRA site rather than relying on one you saw last year. The same interest applies to late instalments and to penalties already charged. Paying part of the balance now reduces the interest accruing on the rest.