For most people January 1st means the beginning of a tax year unless of course your year and is different which is related to business. On the topic of personal tax, getting your income tax done as early as you can really can have some benefits to it. A lot of times what happens is that the T4 slips that are needed to complete the tax filing don’t arrive until the end of February. If you are expecting T3’s or T5013 slips then you might not get these until the end of March.
However, you can start in January by gathering all of your documents and getting them organized into one file that you are going to need for your tax return. Even though you may not have to send some of the receipts that you will be using you still have to keep them handy in case the CRA ever asked for them. Once you do this it gives you more time to make sure that you have all of the receipts that are going to be beneficial to you. If you find that by the end of February that you have not received your T4’s then you have time to be able to contact the employer to see where these are.
Most individuals that are expecting a tax refund will most definitely file as early as they can. There are some benefits to this especially if you owe money on credit cards and you want to use your tax return to make a payment against these. It helps to lower your interest rate with the more principal that you pay, and the sooner you do it the better.
The other benefit of filing early is that you are not going to put it off to the point where you become a late with your filing and get hit with penalties for doing this. It may be that you get busier as the year progresses and forget that you have to gather all of your information for your taxes and you end up scrambling around or being late.
Another great benefit of doing your taxes early especially if you are using a quality tax accountant is that your accountant is going to have the time to spend on your particular tax needs without being rushed. Also, by paying attention to your tax situation early it gives you the time to give it proper thought. It gives you more time to look at what your possible credits may be and what you may be missing out on.
Many times when individuals are looking to remortgage they are required to present their tax return information. If you have done yours early for the current year and received your NOA then you have the necessary documents that you need for this financial transaction.
If you have not set up your appointment as yet here at Toronto Accountant we would be most pleased to arrange this for you now just give us a call at 416-398-1700.
