Over the past several years, would-be buyers in the Canadian residential real estate market have been faced with two realities. First, the cost of homes continued to increase significantly in virtually every market across Canada. At the same time, however, the cost of borrowing to finance a home purchase had almost never been lower.
Since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, the federal government has provided a wide range of pandemic benefit programs for individuals. In the main, those programs have acted to replace income lost where employment income was no longer available as businesses closed during lockdowns, or individuals were unable to work because of illness or because they were at home with young children when schools closed to in-person learning.
Canada’s retirement income system has three major components – private savings through registered retirement savings plans or registered pension plans, and two public retirement income plans – the Canada Pension Plan and the Old Age Security program.
The difficulties faced by younger Canadians in buying a first home almost anywhere in Canada, owing to both the spiraling cost of real estate and, more recently, increases in interest rates, is a major concern for those individuals and their families.
For the majority of Canadians, the due date for filing of an individual tax return for the 2021 tax year was Monday May 2, 2022.
Two quarterly newsletters have been added—one dealing with personal issues, and one dealing with corporate issues.
It is a sad fact that, every year, thousands of Canadians become the victims of scams in which fraud artists claim to be representatives of the federal government. Equally sadly, in most cases the money lost is never recovered.
Most taxpayers sit down to do their annual tax return, or wait to hear from their tax return preparer, with some degree of trepidation. In most cases taxpayers don’t know, until their return is completed, what the “bottom line” will be, and it’s usually a case of hoping for the best and fearing the worst.
Our tax system is complex and, understandably, its myriad rules and exceptions are a mystery to most Canadian taxpayers – and most are happy to leave it that way.
Most Canadians don’t turn their attention to their taxes until sometime around the end of March or the beginning of April, in time to complete the return for 2021 ahead of the May 2, 2022 filing deadline.
