gerard@uwovax.uwo.ca (Gerard Stafleu) (03/28/89)
In article <145@sickkids.UUCP>, mark@sickkids.UUCP (Mark Bartelt) writes: > As I sat down to begin fussing with my taxes last weekend, I discovered > that I never received T5 slips for several of my bank accounts. > > I wonder how many people find themselves in an intolerable situation: > Revenue Canada requires that you report all earned interest, but many > people never receive T5s for some of their accounts. > > Comments? How about the following. Make a guesstimate of the avarrage amount you had in your accounts year round, then apply the avarage current interest rate to it. This should result in a realistic looking number, say $186.35 . I used to do this (be it in another country where the banks don't report the interest in any other way than on your normal monthly statements), and it worked quite well. Problems would only occur if the bank _did_ report interest to Revenue Canada and not to you. In this case RC would correct the problem for you, and you made an innocent "mistake". However, if the banks don't send you a T5, I doubt if they would send RC one.
jim@hcr.UUCP (Jim Sullivan) (03/29/89)
I just made a guess and left it at that. This new system is really stupid. Personally, I feel that if the government is going to tax the interest I receive from my saving's account, then they should pay me interest on the tax they collect from me over the year.
mark@sickkids.UUCP (03/29/89)
As I sat down to begin fussing with my taxes last weekend, I discovered
that I never received T5 slips for several of my bank accounts. I made
a few phone calls to try to find out why. Here's what I learned:
Both Royal Bank and Toronto Dominion Bank have a policy of not sending
out a T5 for accounts which earned less than $100 in the previous year.
TD graciously offered to retrieve copies of my 1988 statements from the
"dungeon", as they called it (presumably some sort of archival storage),
but that it would take two to three weeks, and would cost three dollars
per statement: thirty-six bucks to get an interest report!
Royal Bank was worse: They told me that the information simply was not
available. Period.
In my own case, I actually know how much interest I earned, since I've
kept copies of all my old statements, except for the occasional ones
which never got delivered (thanks to Canada Post) and one can easily
figure out, given the statements which bracket a missing one, how much
interest was credited in months for which the statements are missing.
My calls were primarily to satisfy my curiosity about what would have
happened if I hadn't been quite so compulsive.
I wonder how many people find themselves in an intolerable situation:
Revenue Canada requires that you report all earned interest, but many
people never receive T5s for some of their accounts. They may have no
easy way (or no way at all) of finding out how much interest they earned
in the previous year, unless they've kept their statements (and I wonder
how many people actually do). Note that people are never told (to the
best of my knowledge, anyway) that they may never receive a T5, and that
it might be one's own responsibility to keep track of earned interest.
The really frustrating thing about this is that some computer, somewhere,
knows how much interest each of my accounts earned, since the decision
about whether to send me a T5 presumably isn't made by clerks with green
eyeshades and quill pens! I don't object too strongly to the failure to
send a T5, but I am more than slightly annoyed by the fact that I can't
walk into my branch and find out a piece of information that one of their
computers certainly must know.
Comments?
Mark Bartelt UUCP: {utzoo,decvax}!sickkids!mark
Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto BITNET: mark@sickkids.utoronto
416/598-6442 INTERNET: mark@sickkids.toronto.edumsb@sq.com (Mark Brader) (03/29/89)
> Both Royal Bank and Toronto Dominion Bank have a policy of not sending > out a T5 for accounts which earned less than $100 in the previous year. I suspect that this practice is a holdover from the olden days (i.e., until last year) when the first $1,000 of interest or similar types of so-called income was exempt from income tax. The logic was that if you were earning less than $100 on any one account then most likely you didn't have $1,000 of total interest to report anyway, and if some people were dishonest enough not to report such small amounts when they did have more than the $1,000, well, it wasn't such a major loss to the government. I don't think that that "most likely" assumption is all that valid, actually -- I have had several different years when I was a counterexample, mostly because of having several bank accounts -- and I do think that if all int- erest is going to be taxed then T5's should certainly be sent for all of it. I don't agree that all interest is income or should be taxable, but that's no topic for this newsgroup, and I decline to start that debate. Mark Brader "'Taxpayer' includes any person SoftQuad Inc., Toronto whether or not liable to pay tax." utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com -- Income Tax Act of Canada, s.248(1)
cs3b3aj@maccs.McMaster.CA (Stephen M. Dunn) (03/30/89)
Yeah, it's kinda nasty of them to keep information on you that you aren't given free access to (in some countries, I think it would be illegal). But consider this: if they don't send you a T5, I would imagine that they don't send it to Ottawa, either, so they don't know you made any money on that account (;-). However, I don't recommend that anyone test this hypothesis, because it'll probably land someone in jail and then I'll get sued and end up lying in a gutter somewhere begging passers-by for bottles of wine. Anyway, just something to ponder. Regards, -- ====================================================================== ! Stephen M. Dunn, cs3b3aj@maccs.McMaster.CA ! DISCLAIMER: ! ! I always wanted to be a lumberjack! - M.P. ! I'm only an undergrad ! ======================================================================
jimp@cognos.uucp (Jim Patterson) (03/30/89)
In article <145@sickkids.UUCP> mark@sickkids.UUCP (Mark Bartelt) writes: >As I sat down to begin fussing with my taxes last weekend, I discovered >that I never received T5 slips for several of my bank accounts. > >I wonder how many people find themselves in an intolerable situation: >Revenue Canada requires that you report all earned interest, but many >people never receive T5s for some of their accounts. Since I stopped receiving interest slips (T5s) years ago, I've stopped reporting interest on our savings account on my income tax. (I don't keep much money in savings; it all goes to the mortgage). I never thought much about it; I've assumed that, if the banks don't have to send them to me, I don't have to report it. I don't know if that's what the tax acts say, but I do know that it's pretty unreasonable to expect taxpayers to calculate it themselves. As you point out, the banks have this information. If Revenue Canada really wanted it reported, then they would not have allowed the banks to stop sending out the T5 slips. That's my reasoning, anyways. -- Jim Patterson Cognos Incorporated UUCP:decvax!utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!cognos!jimp P.O. BOX 9707 PHONE:(613)738-1440 3755 Riverside Drive Ottawa, Ont K1G 3Z4
dave@lsuc.uucp (David Sherman) (03/31/89)
In article <5723@aldebaran.UUCP> jimp@cognos.UUCP (Jim Patterson) writes: >Since I stopped receiving interest slips (T5s) years ago, I've stopped >reporting interest on our savings account on my income tax. (I don't >keep much money in savings; it all goes to the mortgage). I never >thought much about it; I've assumed that, if the banks don't have to >send them to me, I don't have to report it. I don't know if that's >what the tax acts say, but I do know that it's pretty unreasonable to >expect taxpayers to calculate it themselves. Nonsense. You have a passbook, don't you? Or monthly statements? You remind me of the people who think that if they do work and are paid in cash, they aren't required to report it. The fact income may be undetectable doesn't in the least change the fact that it's legally income. As I noted in an earlier posting, we have a self-assessment system. T5's and similar information slips are designed to prevent the system from breaking down entirely, but it's still a self-assessment system and should be treated as such. Income tax may be a game in which you try to structure your affairs so as to minimize tax; but it's breaking the rules of the game to not report income which you have earned. As has been pointed out, in the past when $1,000 of interest income was exempt from tax in most cases, small amounts of savings account interest didn't matter. Now they do. It is your legal obligation to report these amounts. David Sherman -- Moderator, mail.yiddish { uunet!attcan att utzoo }!lsuc!dave dave%lsuc@ai.toronto.edu
dave@lsuc.uucp (David Sherman) (03/31/89)
In article <2.UUL1.3#5109@pantor.UUCP> richard@pantor.UUCP (Richard Sargent) writes: >Just as an aside, it seems to me that the tax laws allow deductions of expenses >which were used to earn revenue. This implies that if I declare interest earned, >I can deduct the damned service charges on my income tax!!! Certainly, provided you meet the test you yourself have described. If the service charges are required to earn the interest, you can claim them as carrying charges. But if they are charges for cheques or withdrawals on the account, I don't see how they can be considered amounts paid for the purpose of earning the interest income. David Sherman -- Moderator, mail.yiddish { uunet!attcan att utzoo }!lsuc!dave dave%lsuc@ai.toronto.edu
richard@pantor.UUCP (04/03/89)
Gee, I must be an anarchist or something: if I don't receive a T5 for interest,
I REFUSE to declare interest on my income tax form.
Just as an aside, it seems to me that the tax laws allow deductions of expenses
which were used to earn revenue. This implies that if I declare interest earned,
I can deduct the damned service charges on my income tax!!!
Eat that, Revenue Canada!!
Richard Sargent
Systems Analystjimp@cognos.uucp (Jim Patterson) (04/04/89)
In article <1989Mar30.230601.4162@lsuc.uucp> dave@lsuc.uucp (David Sherman) writes: >In article <5723@aldebaran.UUCP> jimp@cognos.UUCP (Jim Patterson) writes: >> ... but I do know that it's pretty unreasonable to >>expect taxpayers to calculate it themselves. > >Nonsense. You have a passbook, don't you? Or monthly statements? I'll explain this admittedly knee-jerk response. In general, I have no complaint about doing a bit of work to pay my income tax. In this case though I see one standard for the banks and another for the taxpayer, and that's what I think is unreasonable. I'm assuming that the bank has an obligation to send out T5 returns for interest earned on accounts above some threshold. So, there is apparently an arrangement or legislated allowance that banks don't have to send out declarations of earned interest below some minimum value, yet there is no longer such an allowance that individual taxpayers can omit declaring "trivial" amounts of interest. (This is all conjecture, as I'm no expert; if you can clarify the legislation, please do). Disregarding the legalities (which I don't dispute), it doesn't strike me as fair that the banks should be allowed to disregard "trivial" amounts of interest, yet the individual taxpayer isn't so permitted. No doubt, the accumulated cost of sending out interest slips for all of these small accounts is staggering. However, it's all relative; the total interest earned on these accounts must be many times as much. I see this particular exception as just one more case where the Federal Government has taken the side of Business rather than the average citizen. Admittedly, it's a trivial issue, but from my perspective it seems to be part of a trend. -- Jim Patterson Cognos Incorporated UUCP:decvax!utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!cognos!jimp P.O. BOX 9707 PHONE:(613)738-1440 3755 Riverside Drive Ottawa, Ont K1G 3Z4