Nobody likes to make a mistake on their taxes. Most often when an individual has decided to do their tax returns themselves they do so with a lot of tension and stress. This in itself can easily lead you to making a mistake. Common errors often come in the addition of the figures, and then a bigger mistake is forgetting to put something on your tax return like forgetting about one of your T4’s. Not having to worry about errors like this is one of the benefits that most people enjoy when they use the services of a Toronto Accountant.
If you do decide to do your own taxes then make sure you scrutinize them like the CRA does. While you may feel that this is not an easy task because you don’t have the expertise that the tax department has, you also only have one return to scrutinize whereas the CRA has many.
When the tax department reviews your tax return there are many different areas that they have to review. When you are doing your check of your tax return, first check the math. Make sure it is right. It is really easy to make a mistake here because you are bounced around to different work sheets that you then have to transfer the final calculations to your return. This is similar to what the pre-assessment review would be when carried out by the CRA.
Next you want to be sure that you have made use of all the application deductions and credits. This can be time consuming because you may need to really review the tax information to see what may be applicable to you. When you don’t know specifically what you are looking for, it can mean sifting through a whole lot of unnecessary information. The CRA will scrutinize your return to make sure that you are eligible for any credits you have claimed, but in most cases they are not going to tell you about any that you may have missed.
If you are filing electronically which the CRA is encouraging you to do, then you are going to have to do a review to make sure that you have used the tax software properly. In many cases if you have made an error then the program will bring it to your attention, but this only pertains to the information that you have entered. If you have forgotten to enter a T4 then the software won’t know this.
There are several other types of reviews that the CRA may conduct. These can range from random reviews up to specifically targeted individuals.
What we have outlined sounds like a lot of work to get your taxes right, and it is. This is one reason why you may want to reduce your tax filing stress and put it in the hands of Sam Seidman, your trusted Toronto accountant.
