As a public service, Jack Knox’s column will be replaced today by a message from the Canada Revenue Agency/Bureau de Bloodsuque.
Dear Taxpayers/Chers Victimes,
Like a kidney stone, the April 30 deadline to file your 2020 income tax return has now passed. By the stunned look on your face, we can see that you are among the many who missed it.
You should still file, even if you owe no money, as doing so may make it faster for you to receive certain benefits. The following Frequently Asked Questions might help:
Must I pay income tax on the $2,000-a-month CERB payments I received last year?
Yes.
Must I pay income tax on any Employment Insurance benefits I received?
Yes.
Really, even though I’ve been paying into EI for my entire adult life without ever collecting a penny?
Walk it off, princess.
We thought you would extend this year’s deadline, just like you did in 2020. Do I really have to pay a late-payment penalty?
Nah. For you, we’ll waive the charge.
Really?
Of course not. That was a joke, an example of the kind of madcap humour for which we at the Canada Revenue Agency/Bureau de Bloodsuque are justifiably famous. Ha! Ha! Ha!
I share my house with my spouse, our six (or is it seven?) active children and my overbearing in-laws. After coming down with the sniffles in February, I isolated myself in the basement for a precautionary 40-week quarantine, surviving on nothing but Netflix and Skip the Dishes. Can I claim these as a medical expense?
Forty weeks? No need for that. Good news: you can go upstairs now.
No, thanks. I’m good. Another question: Is there a formula for calculating work-from-home expenses?
Yes. Claim either A) the square footage of your home office, multiplied by the number of empties in the background of your Zoom calls, plus the hours supposedly spent educating your now-illiterate, largely feral children (really they’re like the little kid in Road Warrior) minus the amount saved on gas/bus fare/haircuts/wearing pants, or B) $400, whichever is less.
I continued to commute to my job during COVID. On form T777, Employment Expenses, where it asks me to state the cost of going to work, I replied “my dignity, my self-respect and all sense of hope.” Is that OK?
No, but you may claim it under Schedule 2’s Amounts Transferred to a Spouse.
Your website talks of GST rebates for home renos “if the fair market value of the house when the construction is substantially completed is less than $450,000.” To repeat: $450,000. For a house. In Victoria. Is this another example of your madcap humour?
You could always move to Broken Dreams, Sask.
How do I calculate the Canada Child Benefit?
This is fairly straightforward. Merely determine your Adjusted Family Net Income by combining line 23600 of your tax return with line 23600 of your spouse’s return, subtract any UCCB and U.S.S.R. income, transfer the total to line 723 on form T8 (unless the lesser-earning parent has included this amount), multiply the result by 3.2 per cent if you have one child or 5.2 if you have two, then subtract the excess income-averaging allowance from appendix H1N1, which you may obtain by phoning the Canada Revenue Agency/Bureau de Bloodsuque between the hours of 8 and 9 a.m. EST. (Please allow four to six weeks for delivery). Having completed this computation, have a stiff drink. If you can afford to drink, you get no child benefit.
That’s outrageous! Drop dead.
Speaking of dead, last year a Victoria woman named Wilma Williams received a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency/Bur eau de Bloodsuque informing her that she was deceased. This was news to Wilma, though she did lie down just in case. To prevent a repetition of such misunderstandings, from now on, only the deceased person will be allowed to report him or herself as dead. If you are the deceased person, please retain documentary evidence as you may be required to prove you remain dead in future years.
After resigning less than 3½ years into her troubled stint as governor general, Julie Payette could get an annual pension of almost $150,000, plus expenses. What is this called?
Your tax dollars at work.
Years ago, Canada’s military attaché to the U.S. billed taxpayers $129 for the waxing of his wife’s armpits. Is this also a good example of my tax dollars at work?
No, it’s a good example of your tax dollars at play.
Why would you wax your armpits, anyway?
I wouldn’t. I’d pay someone $129 to do it for me.
What form of payment will you take for my income tax bill?
Oh, the usual: iTunes cards, bitcoin, your firstborn* child, livestock…. (*Just kidding. We’ll take all your children.)
Is that your madcap humour again?
No.
