Joined
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3,010 Posts
yep.
here's the dilly:
I owed $150 on my taxes this year (a delayed $500 cheque from a nasty ex-employer from 2003 didn't have any taxes taken off of it, thus throwing off a perfect year of fudiciary management).
not a big deal.
My partner owed $2700 in taxes... she worked freelance as a photographer. She didn't get taxes off. (nor did she ever get vacation pay or anything else that comes with regular employment. This was despite the fact that she worked 40 hours a week. This happens to be technically illegal, though employers do it all the time.) We we're well aware of this, but it still sucks.
not a big deal.
This year we decided to file our taxes together as common-law, because we just had a baby. We have been living together for over 4 years, and are not married. We thought filing together would simply be convenient; we did not do it to benefit ourselves. I didn't benefit us anyway.
We just got 2 letters back regarding our GST credit. It seems that the CCRA combined our incomes as a 'net family income' to recalculate our GST credit. Because we are now 'common law', we are no longer eligible for the same amount, and we must pay some of it back. Of course, the ARBITRARY date we put for the commencement of our common-law status is the date from which we must pay. The combined total is approx $1200.
now I'm pissed.
I understand the 'tax logic' behind this, but the circumstances are ridiculous. Our combined income (being around 50k before taxes) is no different then our individual incomes, so why we are no longer eligible is beyond me. We don't make alot of money, and now we have a dependent. As for common-law status, the term means nothing to us. When prompted for a date on our tax return, we made it up. What this amounts to is us burning $1200 over semantics.
Thanks for listening to my rant... I'm quite pissed. Back paying tax credits over a definition of a relationship is certainly a grudge I'll hold for awhile.
Just think... thats $1200 that could have ended up in some rich pig ad-executive's pockets.
here's the dilly:
I owed $150 on my taxes this year (a delayed $500 cheque from a nasty ex-employer from 2003 didn't have any taxes taken off of it, thus throwing off a perfect year of fudiciary management).
not a big deal.
My partner owed $2700 in taxes... she worked freelance as a photographer. She didn't get taxes off. (nor did she ever get vacation pay or anything else that comes with regular employment. This was despite the fact that she worked 40 hours a week. This happens to be technically illegal, though employers do it all the time.) We we're well aware of this, but it still sucks.
not a big deal.
This year we decided to file our taxes together as common-law, because we just had a baby. We have been living together for over 4 years, and are not married. We thought filing together would simply be convenient; we did not do it to benefit ourselves. I didn't benefit us anyway.
We just got 2 letters back regarding our GST credit. It seems that the CCRA combined our incomes as a 'net family income' to recalculate our GST credit. Because we are now 'common law', we are no longer eligible for the same amount, and we must pay some of it back. Of course, the ARBITRARY date we put for the commencement of our common-law status is the date from which we must pay. The combined total is approx $1200.
now I'm pissed.
I understand the 'tax logic' behind this, but the circumstances are ridiculous. Our combined income (being around 50k before taxes) is no different then our individual incomes, so why we are no longer eligible is beyond me. We don't make alot of money, and now we have a dependent. As for common-law status, the term means nothing to us. When prompted for a date on our tax return, we made it up. What this amounts to is us burning $1200 over semantics.
Thanks for listening to my rant... I'm quite pissed. Back paying tax credits over a definition of a relationship is certainly a grudge I'll hold for awhile.
Just think... thats $1200 that could have ended up in some rich pig ad-executive's pockets.