Hi all

I’m looking for some basic 101 guidance on tax returns in Canada. Here’s the scenario:

Arrived in Canada in August of 2009. Activated a BUNAC visa in October 2009 and worked part-time from October 2009 to March 2010. Began a permanent, full time job in June 2010 which is ongoing. Got a new 1 year skilled worker TWP in October 2010 to replace the expired BUNAC visa.

A tax return was not filed for the FY year of 2009 for no particular reason other than lack of awareness. Should this/did this have to be done?

Can a tax return for FY 2010 be filed although one was not filed for 2009?

Many thanks in advance.

You should have filed a 2009 tax return if you owed tax. This seems unlikely to be the case if you only worked from October on a BUNAC visa. Most probably you paid too much tax in 2009 and are due a rebate. There is no time limit that I know of to claim your rebate.

For 2010 you will need to file in April 2011 and if I were you I'd file for 2009 in the meantime to get back what you're almost certainly owed.

Invest $30 or so in Quicktax Basic or some equivalent software package; they are fairly fool proof. No need for expert help at all.

Programs like QuickTax and similar are OK if your tax situation is fairly straight-forward, but as soon as something slightly out of the ordinary occurs, they often cannot handle it.
While tax preparers are very expensive, there are some that are not so costly. QuickTax will not handle my relatively uncomplicated tax returns but my tax guy in Ottawa only charges me $60 to do it each year - not much more cost than the software.

It seems fairly unlikely that a couple of months Bunac Income would have pushed you over the tax threshold on 2009, but I might be wrong.

In any case there is nothing to stop you reporting 2010 income regardless, but you might want to file 2009 income too, even if you have no tax owing.

Most of the tax software packages are OK. Some are free for low earners. My current choice is TaxFreeway... its cheap and works well.

Thanks to you all for the feedback. Genuinely useful.

It's also useful that the gf's Mum is a CA and has software for this stuff at home (not sure what version)!

Thanks again.

Ross

I guess it depends what one considers uncomplicated or out of the ordinary.

Quicktax and two others I experimented with all handle rental incomes/expenses and foreign incomes.

PM JonboyE - he did my tax returns last year, very efficient and good value for money.