Many, if not most, taxpayers think of tax planning as a year-end exercise to be carried out in the last few weeks of the year, with a view to taking the steps needed to minimize the tax bill for the current year.
Newsletter - Page 14 of 29 - Akler Browning LLP
Latest news and regulations from the financial world.
While recent increases in interest rates have put something of a damper on home sales, the Canadian real estate market was booming in the first quarter of 2022. According to Canadian Real Estate Association statistics, there were over 650,000 residential sales transactions in the first quarter (January to March) of this year.
Of the 27 million individual income tax returns already filed with the Canada Revenue Agency for the 2021 tax year, no two were identical. Each return contained its own particular combination of types and amounts of income reported and deductions and credits claimed. There is, however, one thing which every one of those returns has in common.
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.