Each year, the Canada Revenue Agency publishes a statistical summary of the tax filing patterns of Canadians during the previous filing season. The final statistics for 2023 show that the vast majority of Canadian individual income tax returns – just over 92%, or just under 30 million returns – were filed by electronic means, using one or the other of the CRA’s web-based filing methods. About 2.5 million returns – or just under 8% – were paper-filed.
Income tax is a big-ticket item for most retired Canadians. Especially for those who are no longer paying a mortgage, the annual tax bill may be the single biggest expenditure they are required to make each year.
If there is one invariable “rule” of financial and retirement planning of which most Canadians are aware, it is the unquestioned wisdom of making regular contributions to one’s registered retirement savings plan (RRSP). And it is true that for several decades the RRSP was the only tax-sheltered savings and investment vehicle available to most individual Canadians.
Sometime during the month of February, millions of Canadians will receive some unexpected mail from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). That mail, entitled simply “Instalment Reminder”, will set out the amount of instalment payments of income tax to be paid by the recipient taxpayer by March 15 and June 15 of this year.
