Taxman, Round Two

There's nothing quite like receiving brown official governmental envelopes to make you a bit twitchy after you get home from work.

This year, I decided that rather than try and pay the balance owing on my tax return electronically, I would do so via traditional means. Consequently, I'm done in three weeks this time, rather than three months. Once again, I over calculated the balance. Except this year, by not quite so much. The cheque is almost not worth bothering with; it'll cost $2.75 to go into town on the CTrain to cash it in!!

You Come Over Here, Taking Our Money...

Another saga came to an end today; my first brush with the Canadian taxman. You'll remember (or perhaps not!) my description of filling out my tax return. To cut a long story short, my electronic payment did not end up 'in the right box' in my account with Revenue Canada (their fault, not mine). About a month ago, a letter duly arrived saying "please pay up or we'll banish you to live in Yellowknife for ten years". The telephone number I was supposed to ring, was, in the style of most government institutions, permanently engaged. A call to another number ended up with me being square with the taxman. Better still, he owed me money seeing as I had overcalculated how much I should pay! The cheque arrived today. Victory!

Fun Ways to Spend a Public Holiday

Given it's Easter time, yesterday was a public holiday (though Monday is not, or at least not for me). It was 17C, feeling warm, and clear blue skies. A lovely day for being out and about? Absolutely. But not for me. I had the fun task - put off for a couple of weeks - of filling in my tax return, due at the end of the month. I can't ever recall doing one in the UK, but you're never too old to try exciting new experiences. So after having spent a couple of hours reading the 60 page guide booklet, here's what my (broken) coffee table looked like yesterday afternoon:

Yes, for someone who has only been in the country for 13 months, and has only two sources of income (my salary and interest on my savings account), I need nine pages! I'm glad that I've not decided to claim various items as tax-deductable given seemingly every claim needs another two-page form to fill in. So after a couple of hours of checking, subtracting and pro-rating, I owe the CRA less than I thought I did; a cock-up in payroll meant my tax for last May wasn't deducted at source and I needed to work out how much I owe. The final result came as a pleasant surprise; I owe nearly $150 less than I thought. Less tax to pay = more fun things!