It's income tax time and I can hear everybody cheering with great joy!
In the good old days income tax was simple to file. All we did was add up our income. Everybody got the first $1000.00 tax free before calculating the tax. We did not get a bazillion slips reporting our income . We added up our income, took off the $1000.00 and calculated the tax manually. Finished! Done!
The first time I filed an income tax form was 1957. I worked on the railroad for 10 weeks and made 400.00. I didn't have to pay income tax. I just had to make sure that I filed a return.
Now every dollar we receive in income must be reported to the government and of course to the tax payer. We have some rinky dink things like age amount, care of children blah , blah blah. We get a wopping 10% of this for a tax reduction. Then they make us jump through many hopes taking things off an putting things on. And don't forget the instalment payments you made. I used to do my own income tax return. It just got too complicated and laborious. I finally went to a professional to fill out and file my return.
Well, yesterday was the appointed day for me to receive my assessment notice. The assessment notice from the tax dept. tells me if what I filed was correct. When I filled out my own tax it was either exactly correct or off by a few bucks. I knew this year that I was getting some money returned. When I got my assessment notice I saw that I was receiving much more money back than had been calculated.
I could not think of why this change had been made. Finally, I phoned the guy who filled out my tax return. It was easy. I pay instalments . That is I pay a certain amount each quarter so that I'm not hit with a big bill in April. The bank had put my instalment payment as paying my income tax. The income tax dept was just giving my money back . So my bank was in big trouble. My money had gone to paying my tax instead of the instalment.
Usually the income tax dept. can mess things up. This time it was the bank.
There was no joy in getting extra money back because it wasn't mine. If I kept it I would have had to pay interest on it.
So income tax reporting isn't simple anymore
