Now as I quench my thirst for information on life in Canada, I would like to know about working in Canada.

For instance, what is health and safety like in Canada? also what is average holidays in Canada? Is tax taken straight out of your wage like it is in England or is it like the U.S where you pay your own taxes?

If you kind people out there would like to give me an insight into the Canadian way of working I would be extremely happy. At the moment I am trying to gather as much info as possible in the quest to decide whether or not to attempt to take my family to a new life in Canada.

Thankyou for your assistance and time, Paul.

Health & safety does exist to an extent in most professional/white collar companies to a degree. The difference between Canada VS UK or USA is that 'no win no fee' lawyers (and subsequently sueing/lawsuits against employers) are rare and usually drag out a very long time with little chance of success unless of course it was a blatantly proven fact that the employer put the employees in danger knowingly. Usually though, most mid-large companies in my experience in Canada tended instead to offer group health insurance plans which covered compensation & treatement for accidents, illness etc.

Typically most companies offer accumulative 10 working days paid vacation per year to start with which increases if working at the same company for (not sure here) 5 years? What I mean by accumulative is that you 'earn' the time off after having worked at the company for a full year. There are also basic 'sick day' entitlements (usually 5 working paid days maximum per year accumulative although you will likely asked for a doctors note if you've been off ill for more then 2 days) and the maternity & paternity leave I found alot more reasonable in Canada then here in the UK. I believe it is 1 year in total of paid leave in which it can be split with both parents (ie, mum takes the first 6 months off, dad takes the last 6 months off looking after the little ones) and like most countries, there are standard employment labour laws on the govt websites.... think its CRRC but may be making it up, been awhile since I've visited.

Most corporate/white collar mid-large businesses do their best to take out the right amount of federal (Canadian national govt) income tax and provincial income tax (province is our equivalent of 'states' or 'counties') and each year these employers provide you with a T4 (and in Quebec its called a Releve du somethingorother) slip which states how much money was taken off/paid by your company for taxes & employment insurance deductions etc. The largest difference between the UK & Canada is that it is each individuals responsibility to file/submit their yearly federal & provincial income tax forms. Personally never enjoyed all the confounding paperwork. Each of the income tax forms come with a seriously thick booklet with definitions and calculations of what amounts to what from where... kind of guidebooks for both federal & provincial, personally would take me a week of every evening scratching my head and having to start over again repeatedly.

If you have the money & no patience (like me) you will pay a professional to do it for you every year (used H&R block every year myself & was a piece of cake, just piled all the paperwork on their desks, they asked some basic questions (single or married, kids or no, property owner or not etc) and then sometimes within the same day, sometimes a couple of days later, they have all the forms magically filled out and sent in to the respective government tax offices for you *lol*

I think to start with you will have to do some research to narrow down which provinces (and then cities/areas) you would consider living in as the figures and way of life/laws etc vary from province to province in Canada... good luck!

For the average working Canadian with minimal investments and some RRSP's filing income tax is easy and relatively painless.

You can also purchase a number of different tax software programs (Tax Whiz, Cantax, Quick Tax and a few more) that make it very easy.

That being said I would think for the first year tax filing it would be an idea to consult a tax expert in order to make sure you as a new resident don't miss anything.

Cheers
Steve

good suggestions about the tax software, some of them are supposed to be good.
I once tried it one year using the provincial & federal 'online' submissions but of course, it gave me errors and messed up which meant I wasted time & money and ended up paying H&R Block to fix it for me after printing off everything *lol*

But it was fairly new back then and it may (I hope!) have got better since then!

We've been using tax software for at least the last ten years (possibly longer but I can't remember ), with no problems whatsoever.

The last few years we have been filing online and received our tax rebates within a week.

We used to use Quick Tax exclusively but they started to limit the number of returns to four or five and we need six for myself, my wife and my two sons and their wives so we switched to one called UFile either last year or the year before it has worked just fine and allows us to prepare the six returns we wanted.

Are you for hire in 2 years time?

Hi
I think vacation depends on the company. i work for a Big 4 accountancy firm and started with 4 weeks a year, plus 3 days for dependent care plus 2 extra days off between christmas and new year.
Depending on where you work, pension contributions may or may not be mandatory.
They don't bring cake in for birthdays! Although I have been invited to continue the british tradition for the benefit of my colleagues.
We have an alcohol policy where excessive drinking at firm events is outlawed and NO alcohol at lunch time.
Generally work life is good. Everyone works hard when needed but there is less stressful environment. Less hierarchy too.

Susan

Sorry, I only do volunteer stuff nowadays.

No I'm not volunteering to do your taxes.

Dammit! Oh well was worth a try LOL!!

taxes for pole dancing

Yeah. Pole tax. I remember it well.