So can anyone here explain to me how the recent changes in UCCB will affect my tax situation?
I'm not currently working, we became eligible to receive the UCCB in January, having been here 18months, I applied recently and received it for our 1 child (including retro payment back to January). It's now $160 per month so that was nearly $1000. Nice.
However this benefit is classed as taxable income for me, and currently my OH gets a full Tax credit (I think) for me.
Am I right in thinking this benefit will just be cancelled out dollar for dollar by the reduction in tax credit he receives?
I also heard that this has just replaced one of the other tax credits - which was $2k a year anyway?
Much as I would love to jump up and down in glee at this money I can't help thinking we are going to be worse off come tax time...

Yes, I read somewhere that we're going to be worse off by around $1,000-$1,500

How? You get an extra $720 ish per year, and no longer get your $2k tax credit.

So you should be better off each year by at least $150.

Unless my math aint wot it should be.

Thank naff I don't have to pay income tax here. At least with the sales tax I pay I'm pretty sure its not going to this nonsense.

I spoke to our accountant who said it will be a reduction of $490 per child under 6 on your tax return. So either a lot less return or will end up owing. I think it's quite sneaky personally, probably done to get votes who knows.

No probably about it.

Still, i'd rather they did this than those god awful trash ads on the radio and TV bad mouthing the opposition. So low brow.

Supposedly on tonight's CTV NATIONAL NEWS there will be a report on the matter outlining whether/how much better off one will be, or not.

It may be universal, but the new child care benefit doesn’t benefit everyone equally

It's a bit like the income-splitting plan, too, in that it benefits non-working parents (who don't actually have a requirement to fund child care at all) more than anyone else. As I understand it, UCCB has to be nominally claimed by the lower income earner in a two-parent family. If that person's income is zero or close to zero, then the marginal rate to pay tax on the UCCB is lower (or zero) too, so they won't have to pay any of it back at tax time.

Well done the Tories - once again helping those who need help the least (but are most likely to vote for Harper), at the expense of the working poor. Hurrah.

I'd love to see the math on that. I haven't seen any worked examples where people are actually worse off in the end - unless, of course, they've spent all the money and not made any provision for paying the tax owing...

Thanks for that link. Very interesting. What a huge amount of administration to go to for bugger all return. Why not just send everyone a cheque for $150 and be done with it!

A bit like identifying everyone's level of child benefit, GST refund, and Income Tax refund and issuing seventeen payments instead of combining some of them.

Or that time when NB announced it would offset the increase in electricity bills one year by covering 8% of domestic bills.

But instead of having the Power company charge customers 92% and the government the other 8% - or even charge the full rate but issue a single statement to customers identifying the amount for the year and, thus, the 8% amount - it was decided that all customers had to pay the full rate, save their bills and then at the end of the year send off 12 bills for the government department to have to add up the 12 amounts, calculate 8% and then send out a cheque (and return the bills in hefty envelopes at not insignificant cost) to each and every account holder and the subsequent investigations for missing cheques that would inevitably not arrive when a few hundred thousand are involved.

Canada eh?

Makes you wonder why computers were invented.

um, perhaps because "My fellow Canadians, your Conservative government has today, out of the kindness of its heart and thinking only of the wellbeing and financial security of your children, deposited multiple hundreds of dollars in your bank accounts and will continue to do so until after the next election" is a bigger draw to voters than "here, have a cheque, buy a dozen beers, vote for me."

Or is that too cynical a view?