File Your Tax Return Now

Yes, I know, even though we don't like it, it's that time of the year again when a taxpayer's thoughts turn to filing those pesky tax returns. The Globe has a good article why you should file asap. Makes sense to me.

"Having to tackle that dreaded pile of paperwork known as taxes at a time of year when the weather is practically pulling you outside seems sinful, so why not put it off for just another week?

With the April 30 filing deadline roughly a month away, the danger of procrastinating for too long is that you will cobble together a sloppy return and make a costly mistake, one that could ultimately leave you with less money in your pocket.
"When time is not on your side, you are in a rush," says Cleo Hamel, a senior tax analyst with H&R Block Canada. "If you owe money and don't pay on time, the panic is that you will have to pay a penalty."
Facing that kind of time pressure, most people will not take the time to find those medical receipts or the ones for their child's hockey lessons. "Most people just file what they have handy. Which means they are settling," Ms. Hamel said.
There are a number of child, home and spouse-related credits and deductions that you can potentially claim to trim your family's tax bill, but rest assured that Canada Revenue Agency is not going to point them out to you. It is up to you to make sure you are taking advantage of everything that you are rightfully allowed to claim.
Sadly, finding that medical or hockey lesson receipt three years later is not going to cut it. By then, it will be too late.
Ms. Hamel points out these common mistakes Canadians make when they file their taxes:
1 Receiving a refund means your tax return is correct.
Even though you may receive a refund cheque or deposit with all of the credits you claimed, the Canada Revenue Agency can ask you to provide receipts or documents to review your return. The review process tends to start in July with thousands of taxpayers receiving letters asking for more information. If you don't provide the information within the right time frame, the CRA will re-assess your return without the credit included, which usually results in a tax bill. Moving expenses and the tuition transfer credit are two of the most reviewed credits.
2 Procrastinating.
Waiting until the last minute to prepare your return usually results in a rush and a much higher probability that you will miss something. Even if you don't start preparing your return early, do review your slips and make sure you have everything ready to file. If you are missing a slip, this gives you time to search for it. Then set aside some time before April 30 to prepare your return so you have an opportunity to ask questions.
3 The Canada Revenue Agency will correct mistakes.
If you make a mistake declaring your income, the Canada Revenue Agency will certainly notify you of the error and any taxes owing. But if you miss a credit or deduction, do not assume they will correct your return. It is not the CRA's job to make sure you take advantage of the credits you are allowed to claim.
4 Carrying forward old receipts.
Taxpayers who find medical expenses or slips after they have filed their returns cannot just add it to the following year's tax return. You have to file a T-1 Adjustment to include the slip on your previous returns. You can go back up to 10 years to correct errors but adjustments have to be filed on paper and can take six to eight weeks to process. The only exception is charitable donation receipts, which can be combined for up to five years.
5 Income splitting.
Only certain taxpayers are allowed to split income on their tax returns. Business owners can split income with their family members if the family member works for the company and normally a person would have been hired to complete the work. Eligible pension income can be split but you must complete a Form 1032 and submit it with your tax return in order to claim it. Or if you are collecting Canada Pension Plan payments, you can split this income as well, under certain conditions, but you must apply to Service Canada.
6 Overpayment of CPP and EI.
If you have overpaid CPP and Employment Insurance during the tax year, you have to include Forms 2204 (CPP) and Form PD24 (EI) in order to make a claim. If you are using tax software, it will do this automatically. If you are completing your return manually, you need to make sure your forms are included in order to receive the credit. And there is a time limit for claiming the overpayments."

Those of you out there who haven't even looked at your returns, better get busy. That deadline will come faster than you think. Besides, if you do it now, you'll have that monkey off your back for another year. Plus if you have a refund coming, you'll receive it sooner. Isn't that an incentive? If you owe, just get it over with, the sooner the better.

My husband and I completed our returns last night and will be in the mail later today. Good luck, happy tax return filing, and I hope each of you end up with a refund!
Don't forget, the deadline to file is April 30, 2010

Liberals Hoping for The Easter Bunny

 That's the way Don Martin  describes the Liberal's weekend Thinkers Conference. He is not exactly known to be a Harper Conservative fan.  He rips the Liberals apart more or less stating that the weekend  was a failure. The speakers  were full of doom and gloom and offered unrealistic if not impossible solutions.

"Discussions at the Liberal’s three-day Deep Thinkers Summit were thoroughly depressing - which means the conference was successful as an academic exercise and a probable failure as the party’s political fix.
Straight-shooting speakers filled the hall with gloomy future scenarios and impossible solutions under hostile headlines like those generated by an attack on the lost, soul-less, conniving Liberal party from diplomat Robert Fowler, who tongue-lashed delegates into shocked silence on Sunday with a profoundly insightful, must-hear speech on Canada’s misguided foreign policy."
  

Then he goes on to report what other Liberals were whispering:

"As former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna whispered to former prime minister Paul Martin halfway through debate on one of the intractable problems: "We’re f****d". Responded Mr. Martin: "The whole world is f****d."

 

He describes Mr. Iffy's closing speech as flat and that Mr. Iffy would freeze the corporate tax rates.

"His final speech Sunday was strangely flat and the top priority of Canadians -- jobs -- did not appear anywhere in the wrap-up news release, dwarfed by announcing a curious freeze on corporate income tax rates once they come into office."

 

Here comes the Easter Bunny comment: 

 "He even shrugged off that fiscally ruinous health care file by insisting it could be magically cured with better prevention, new technology and more home-care for the elderly. If he believes that, he should order the Easter bunny to deliver sugarless eggs this weekend as a national kickstart to obesity prevention."

 Here an  ouch from Martin:

 "But if many of the proposed Think Big answers are actually hammered into the party’s platform, the Liberals should be advised to Think Small in terms of seats in the next election."

So from gleaning what went on at the Libs  thinkers weekend,  I don't think Conservatives have too much to worry about. They just to need keep their noses to the grind, working hard, and getting positive things done for Canadians.

 Liberals can live in their fantasy world hoping and waiting for the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, a Fairy Godmother or whatever else to rescue them from the opposition wilderness to where they think they should be,(which they think is government)   Conservatives will continue to live in the real world bringing realistic pragmatic approaches that will  help to solve the problems that we are facing.

The Great Reneger

James Travers Laments His Precious Liberals

It seems James Travers is  frustrated that his Liberals just can't seem to make any headway into kicking those evil Conservative bums out.  Looks like he's pining for for good ole days when Liberals were in power stealing our money and taking us for fools.

 MONTREAL-A messiah complex haunts the federal Liberal party. Lost in the shadows of its giants, Liberals can't move beyond past successes to fix current failures or find their future.

A year ago, Liberals thought they saw in Michael Ignatieff some of the greatness of Wilfrid Laurier, Lester Pearson and, most hopefully, Pierre Trudeau. Now they are here this weekend, as well as at satellite meetings around the country, hoping that "thinkers" can deliver the substance and vision the party carelessly assumed the new leader was dragging home from away.
The Liberal problem is not that it's now a shell of the clever party Laurier, Pearson and Trudeau left behind. It's not even that the political machine that carried Jean Chrétien to three consecutive majorities is now a clunker. No, the party's problem is that it can't decide what it means to be progressive in the 21st century or remember how to win elections.

Boo Hoo Hoo!
...................................................

"None of that softens the hard truth delivered unvarnished by a former Liberal cabinet minister: The Liberal brand is badly damaged and may not sustain another hit.
 ...................................................
  
Sensing the dangers, Liberals are now looking for something to carry them through the next election while they wait for the next messiah. Instead, they should be searching their souls for who they are and what, if anything, they believe.

  Better do something quick!  The Conservatives just might become the Natural Governing Party! Wouldn't that be terrible?


  He seems almost afraid that the Libs are almost done for and won't be back in office for a long, long, long,time.
 Yes, James the world is going to come to an end if your precious Liberals are not returned to power soon.
Cry me a river!

The Liberals How to Get Back Into Power Quick Conference

Former Liberal boss, admitted as much yesterday. That is the main objective of this so called "Thinkers Conference," how to get back into power as quickly as possible so we can get our sticky little fingers on taxpayer money again. Dream up all kinds of schemes like the Gun Registry, some kind of Adscam scheme, National Daycare program etc.


"Did they get the urgency of public investments in education? How will they react this morning if, as is likely, former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge tells them that higher taxes are needed? Will Liberals understand that they are kidding themselves (and the country) if they think even half of their lofty policy ambitions can be realized without more public revenues, which means higher taxes? " Jeffery Simpson


"Chrétien said, "there were a lot of them (good ideas) but to make sure we win the next election, I think."

He added, "We can't re-invent the wheel," and that the 1991 conference was just a component of his success...and that the main thing is to do everything right."



If they want to do something right, they should apologize for stealing our money through Adscam and pay back the $40 million plus they owe us.

Don Martin I think sums it up real nicely.

"Liberals bring out the dead in search of new life"

"A gathering dominated by white-skinned, grey-haired Liberals, an audience along the lines of old Canadian Alliance conventions, is charged with forging policy for a Canada where visible minorities are about to become the majority.

And how can the conference juggle the challenge of retiring baby boomers about to crush the shoulders of the next generation when the advancing age of these attendees is the demographic problem and not the solution?

Perhaps one shouldn't be cynical. There are Big Brains here who, potentially, have enough IQ to think big outside of their age group or income bracket.

Still, I'd bet 90 per cent of those in this audience think a double-double is four shots of single malt Scotch and not a Tim Hortons coffee order. And that disconnect makes dreaming up big ideas for the average voters a huge challenge"

Don't you see? All they care about is getting back into power and their fingers into the public purse. Don't think voters are going buy it this time. I think the public is seeing the Liberals for what they are, their arrogance, the attitude of entitlement. They are power hungry, nothing more. They don't care about the country, they only care about themselves.

So promise all these big ticketed lofty programs without any thought how to pay for them in a time of growing deficit and debt in order to buy votes to gain power.
Then continue like they did before skimming off taxpayer money to do whatever with our money for themselves. Try to sow division within the CPC (which they tried to with the abortion issue last week and it backfired on them) to get back to the public purse.

Not going to work. This time the Conservatives are united, well funded, are although not perfect by any stretch, are doing a good job governing. They have taken us through a bad recession fairly well and now we are recovering nicely.

To top is off, Stephen Harper is no, Joe Clark, Robert Stanfield, Preston Manning or Stockwell Day (although I think Manning and Day unjustly got a bad rap from the Liberal war room and the media.) the whole hidden agenda, Bible thumping theocratic, Neanderthal image etc. is just old now and doesn't work anymore. Look what happened last week. Liberals defeated their own motion requiring the government to include abortions for the enhancement of Mothers and children's health program in the developing world in the up and coming G8 and G20 summits. I wouldn't be surprised if they try and dredge the abortion issue up again in the next campaign.

I know, this is the time of year we think about a resurrection but it's not the resurrection of the Liberal party even though they think of themselves as our Lord and Saviour.