Slips and Information needed to prepare your tax return

Click here for information regarding most common “Income and Deduction” Slips”

Click here for information regarding “Rental Income”

Click here for information regarding “Self-Employed Income”

Click here for information regarding “Employment Expenses”

Click here for information regarding most common “Student slips”

Click here for information regarding most common “Retiree Income”

Click here for information regarding “Children Deductions” including transfer of tuition for children going to CEGEP and University

Click here for information about purchasing or selling a home (principal residence and for rental property)

Section 1 – Most Common Income and Deductions Slips

Introduction to Tax Slips

In the province of Quebec, two slips are issued for every type of income. One for the Federal tax return (they all start with a “T”) and one for the Quebec tax return (they all start with “Relevée” (RL for short)). When it comes to employment income, both the T4 and RL1 are required as both slips have different information.

When I do not mention the Relevé in a particular type of income, it’s because all the information needed is contained on the Federal “T” version. For example, I do not need the Relevé 3 slip for interest income reported on a T5 as it’s the same information on both slips.

When you’re not sure if you need a slip or not, please bring everything and we will sort through your documents when we’ll prepare your tax return.

There are no Relevé slips from jobs in other provinces as they only issue T slips

Slips for most common sources of income

T4 and Relevé 1 slips for Employment Income – Each employer you had in the calendar year must issue you a T4 and RL 1 slip, even if you only worked a single hour for them.

Unemployment Insurance income appears on a T4E which you must get from the Services Canada website or is sometimes mailed to recipients

Welfare Income and Workers Compensation (CSST) – You should receive a T5007/Relevé 5 from the government of Quebec for this income

Advanced Canada workers benefit (ACWB) payments – RC210. There is no Quebec version

Investment Income – Interest, dividends, foreign investments, etc. are reported on T3 and T5 slips from the financial institutions you have your investments with.

Relevé 31 slip from landlord – This slip is used to claim the “rental” portion of the solidarity tax credit. It is issued by your landlord only if you have a lease with your name on it. If your individual or household income is over 53k, then you’re unable to claim the STC and no RL31 is needed

Capital Gains/Losses from stocks – These are reported on a T5008 or on a profit/loss worksheet that most financial provide on their year-end statement (that also includes the T3/T5 slips).

*** Important note regarding Capital Gains/Losses from stocks – typically the sales price of the stock appears on the T5008 or the profit/loss worksheet provided but the purchase price is sometimes missing (on the T5008 it appears in Box 20). We require the purchase price of each stock sold in order to calculate the gain/loss. Please contact your financial institution you trade through if you are missing the purchase price

RRSP withdrawals – We require both the T4RSP and the RL2 slips issued by the institution in which you made the withdrawal from

Withdrawals from First Home Savings Account (FHSA) – T4FHSA and Relevé32

Support payments to or received from an ex-spouse – A summary sheet is issued by the Quebec government showing how much support payment was paid or received during the year. If the payments received/paid out are a mixture of child support (money exclusively for the children) and alimony (payments for ex-spouse), I need a break-down of these two amounts. They are not separated on the Quebec statement, it only shows the amount paid/received during the year

Other Income, Self-employment, bursary income, etc. are reported on a T4A/RL1 or RL2

Foreign income – In Canada, we are taxed on our worldly income. If Canada has a tax treaty with the country you earned income in, you could be eligible for a credit on the taxes paid in order to avoid double taxation. This includes (but not excluded to) rental income, investment income, business income, pension income, employment income, etc. In order to find the amount of your foreign income and taxes paid, most people receive a yearly statement from the financial institution or government they receive the payment from

Most common deductions

Medical expenses including dental work, prescriptions, glasses and anything else of a medical nature for yourself, your spouse and your children under 18. The only medical expenses not accepted are cosmetic procedures and birth-control medication/devices

RRSP – for anyone who’s made contributions year-round, you should be getting two RRSP receipts. One from March 1st to December 31th of the tax year and another for contributions made from January 1st to February 28th of the next year.

Contributions from First Home Savings Account (FHSA) – T4FHSA and Relevé32

*** Important RRSP Note: for those filing their tax return in February or March, they might not have received their RRSP receipt for the period of January 1st to February 28th as either the period has not ended yet or the financial institution did not have enough time to produce them. In this case, you just need to call your institution and ask them what your contributions for this period are.

Union, order/association and professional insurance fees. If Union fees are deducted by your employer, they should appear in box 44 of your T4. The fees that are not automatically deducted are usually obtained from receipts issued by the order/association.

Charitable and/or political donations

Interest on student loans – usually found on the year-end statement that you receive from the institution that is handling your student loan

Alimony payments – not to be confused with Child Support payments, Alimony is the portion of support payment that is specifically for the ex-spouse and not the children. See “Support payments” in the income section above for more information

Investment expenses: includes interest on loans used for investments, yearly management fees from your financial institution, consultation fees, transaction fees for buying/selling stocks

Tuition credits from post-secondary education. We need the T2202 and Relevé 8 tax receipt that can usually be found on your online school account

***Important note regarding tuition credits for low/no income students. If you live with your parents and have very low/no income, there are credits that the parents can claim on their Quebec tax return for supporting a student. In order to claim them, you must file your tax return at the same time as your parents/children. The student needs to be a full-time student for at least 4 months in the year. There needs to be an amount in Box A of their RL8 slip in order to make a claim

Tuition credits from past years – Most students have/had low income during their academic career and have accumulated tuition credits over those years that are carried-forward indefinitely. If you graduated from CEGEP or university within the last 3 years, there is a chance you have tuition credits on file. The way to check if you have any tuition credits is:
1. Check your last year’s Notice of Assessment from the Federal and Quebec government.
2. Call the CRA (Federal government) at 1-800-959-8281 and the Quebec government at 1-800-267-6299 and they can give you the information over the phone. Make sure to have a copy of your last year’s tax return when you call so you can answer their security questions.

Caregiver Amount – If you are supporting a parent(s) over 65 and they live with you (you must be the owner or the lessor of the dwelling), you can possibly claim a credit for them.

Disability amount – If you or a person you are supporting have a disability and wish to claim the disability credit, you must have submitted a Disability Tax Credit Certificate (a T2201 for the Federal government and TP-752 for the Quebec side) filled/signed by your doctor. It must be sent to both governments for them to confirm that the disability is eligible for the credit. It is common for one government to approve the credit and the other to deny the claim. It usually takes 2-3 months for either government to review/approve the claim. Once they have approved the application, a claim for the credit can be made. If the start date for the disability is back-dated to a previous year, we can make an adjustment to those year’s tax returns to claim the disability credit.

Employment expenses – some jobs require the employee to pay certain expenses in the line of earning their income. For example, some teachers are required to maintain a home office to grade student’s work/to setup the next day’s program or delivery drivers who need to supply their own vehicle and pay for all expenses. These expenses can be deducted from your income.

In order to do so, the employer needs to fill out the form T2200 (for the Federal side) and TP64.3 (for Quebec) which state the conditions of employment. It will lay out what types of expenses the employee was required to pay themselves in fulfilling their employment duties.

Click here for more information regarding Employment Expenses

Section 2 - Rental Income:

Rental income is calculated on the simple formula:

Rent collected - Expenses = Profit or Loss

The profit gets added to your income and you pay taxes according to the tax bracket you are in. Any losses reduce your net income.

In order to calculate your Rental income or loss, we need the following information:

The rent you collected from your tenant(s) during the calendar year

All the expenses associated with the property during the calendar year such as:
1. All taxes paid - Property tax, school tax, water tax, welcome tax and any other taxes that are directly related to the property
2. Interest on the mortgage. The full mortgage is not deductible, only the interest portion. The division of “interest” and “principle” (original loan portion) of the payments can be found on your year-end mortgage summary that you receive from the financial institution that gave you the loan
3. All repairs and maintenance costs of the rental property
4. Home insurance
5. Advertising in order to find a tenant
6. Legal/accounting fees. This includes the amount you paid for your tax return that included rental property in the calendar year (ie. You can claim your 2016 tax return fee that included rental property on your 2017 tax return)
7. Office expenses
8. Employee fee
9. Management and administration fees

Property shared by multiple owners – if there are other owners (besides your spouse), we need to report them by including their name, social insurance number and home address

*** I require all clients to add up all expenses and have their year-end totals before they come in for their appointment. If I’m required to add receipts for my clients, I charge $150/hour for my time.

Section 3 - Self-employed and sole proprietorship business

For individuals who work for themselves (and are not incorporated), you must claim this income on your regular T1 and TP1 tax returns. It all comes down to:

Sales – Expenses = Profit or Loss

The profit gets added to your income and you pay taxes according to the tax bracket you are in. Any losses reduce your net income.

We are able to claim all expenses that are directly related to earning the self-employed/business income.

The most common expenses are:

- Rent
- Office Expenses
- Cell phone and Internet
- Meals and entertainment for clients (meals for yourself are not deductible)
- Advertising
- Bad Debts
- Supplies
- Business tax, licence fee, dues, membership fees
- Legal, accounting and professional fees. This includes the amount you paid for your tax return that included self-employed/business income in the calendar year (ex. You can claim your 2016 tax return fee that included self-employed income on your 2017 tax return)
- Furniture
- Management and administration fees
- Maintenance and repairs
- Employee salaries
- Travel
- Phone and utilities
- Home Office expenses*
- Vehicle expenses**

*Home Office

If you perform part or all of your work at you home (either rented or owned), we are able to claim a percentage of your home costs as a deduction. The percentage is dependent upon the square footage of the work area is in relation to the total square footage of the home. For example, if your home office is 90 square feet in an apartment that has a total of 800 square feet, then we can claim 90/800 = 11% of home office expenses.

Expenses you can claim for those who Rent their home:

- Rent
- Hydro
- Heat

Expenses you can claim for those who Own their home:

- Hydro
- Heat
- Property, school and water tax
- Home insurance (but not property insurance)
- Interest on the mortgage. The full mortgage is not deductible, only the interest portion. The division of “interest” and “principle” portion of the payments can be found on your year-end mortgage summary that you receive from the financial institution that gave you the loan
- Home maintenance that is directly related to the work area

**Vehicle Expenses

If you use your personal vehicle to earn your self-employed or business income, we can claim a portion of all vehicle expenses paid during the year.

By law, you should be keeping a journal of how many KM you drive in a day for personal and how much is work related. In the end, you should be able to tell me how many KM you drove in the year and how many was for work. We divide the KM for work over the KM total for the year to give us the percentage used for work. We then claim XX% of all car expense incurred in the year.

The most common vehicle expenses are:

- Gas for the year
- Insurance
- Repairs and maintenance
- Registration and Licence fee
- Interest paid on a car loan for the calendar year
- Lease payments in the calendar year

*** Do I include GST/QST in the expense amounts?

If you have a GST/QST number then you do not include GST/QST in the expenses you claim on the tax return. This is because you are already claiming back the GST/QST you paid on all expense when you remit the GST/QST you collected during the year

You only add the GST/QST to the amount in the expenses when you do not have a GST/QST number and are not able to claim back the taxes you paid.

An example of a summary I require is as follows:

Sales for the tax year: $26,250

Expenses (year-end total include all taxes paid as this client does not have a GST/QST number to claim back these taxes):

Office Supplies	$426.25
Travel	$225.00
Rent for Home Office	$12,000
Hydro	$360
Cell Phone	$624.87
Internet	$554.00

Section 4 - Employment Expenses

Some jobs require the employee to pay certain expenses in the line of earning their income. For example, some teachers are required to maintain a home office to grade student’s work/to setup the next day’s program or delivery drivers who need to supply their own vehicle and pay for all expenses. These expenses can be deducted from your income.

In order to do so, the employer needs to fill out the form T2200 (for the Federal side) and TP64.3 (for Quebec) which state the conditions of employment. It will lay out what types of expenses the employee was required to pay themselves in fulfilling their employment duties as per their employment contract.

Depending on the nature of your income (either regular salary or commission income), the expenses you claim can be limited.

Please view the section 3 “Self-employed and sole proprietorship business” for a list of expenses that are most commonly claimed and the format of the summary of expenses we require to prepare your tax return.

Section 5 – Students

Most students have the following documents to report on their tax return:

Tuition credits from post-secondary education. We need the T2202 and Relevé 8 tax receipt that can usually be found on your online school account

T4A/RL2 for bursary/scholarship/grant/fellowship income. Make sure you have the T4A/RL2 from every organization that issued you one of the above payment.

T4 and Relevé 1 slips for Employment Income – Each employer you had in the calendar year must issue you a T4 and RL 1 slip, even if you only worked a single hour for them.

Relevé 31 slip from landlord – This slip is used to claim the “rental” portion of the solidarity tax credit. It is issues by your landlord only if you have a lease contract with your name on it.

***Money received from parents in or outside of Canada is not considered income. They are considered a gift and are not taxable.

These are just the most typical items student claims. Remember that you need to claim all sources of income so please check “SLIPS FOR MOST COMMON SOURCES OF INCOME” for anything else that might apply

Section 6 - Retiree Income

***Important Note for those with numerous investments through various financial institutions:

I’d advise that you wait until the first week of April to set an appointment to prepare your income tax return. Banks and other financial institutions are very slow when it comes to issuing slips for investments. It’s been common amongst my clients to receive additional financial slips after they had already prepared their tax return in March.

Most common slips for Senior Citizen

T4AOAS – (Old Age Security) for Federal Pension and the Guaranteed Income Supplement

T4AP – for the Quebec (Canada) Pension Plan

Investment Income – Interest, dividends, foreign investments, etc. are reported on T3 and T5 slips from the financial institutions you have your investments with.

Capital Gains/Losses from stocks – These are reported on a T5008 or on a profit/loss worksheet that most financial provide on their year-end statement (that also includes the T3/T5 slips).

*** Important note regarding Capital Gains/Losses from stocks – typically the sales price of the stock appears on the T5008 or the profit/loss worksheet provided but the purchase price is sometimes missing (on the T5008 it appears in Box 20). We require the purchase price in order to calculate the gain/loss on the sale of the stock

Disability amount – If you have a disability and wish to claim the disability credit, you must have submitted a Disability Tax Credit Certificate (a T2201 for the Federal government and TP-752 for the Quebec side) filled/signed by your doctor and it must be sent to both governments for them to confirm that your disability is eligible for the credit. It is common for one government to approve the credit and the other denies the claim. It usually takes 2-3 months for either government to review/approve the claim.

For seniors who live with their children – your children might be able to claim a caregiver amount if you live with them (the residence or lease is under their name). In order to claim the credit, we must prepare all the parent’s and children’s tax returns at the same time.

Please review the “Slips for most common income” and “Most common deductions” in section 1 for other sources of income and deductions that might apply

Section 7 - Deductions for children under 18 and those going to a CEGEP or University

Daycare expenses – Private daycares are only required to issue a standard receipt. If the daycare is a government subsidised daycare, you should have also received a Relevé 24 and a Relevé 30

For children who are attending CEGEP or University, live at home and have low income, there is a credit on the Quebec tax return for parents supporting a student (must be 18 or older). We can also transfer Federal tuition credits from a student to a parent. In order to claim either credit, we need to prepare the parent’s and children’s tax return at the same time.

In 2017, many deductions and slips for children were phased out but you must be aware of it if you’re doing a pre-2017 tax return such as:

RC62 slip for the Universal Child Care Benefit – This was an amount given by the Federal government up until June 2016. If you are doing a pre-2017 tax return and you had children under 18 during this time, you probably had an RC62 slip issied.

Bus passes for children under 19 was phased out in 2017. If your child purchased bus passes for any pre-2017 tax return you are preparing, please let us know

Child Fitness and Arts credit – Pre-2017, we were able to claim a credit for physical activities and art sessions for children who were under 16 at the start of the calendar year

Section 8 - Purchasing or selling a dwelling (primary residence)

If you are purchasing your first home or you’re purchasing a dwelling and it’s been over 5 years since you last owned a dwelling, you can claim the “First Time Home Buyer’s” credit which can be worth up to $750 on the Federal tax return. If a dwelling was purchased by multiple individuals, only one of the owners can claim this credit.

If you sold your primary residence in 2016, the CRA demands that you report the sale on your tax return on the schedule 3. You will not pay any taxes on the sale if it was your principle residence for 1) at least one year after purchase, 2) you lived in the dwelling the entire time of ownership. If the dwelling was used as rental property for a while, then you could be liable to pay taxes on capital gains.

On the 2017 tax return, the CRA demand you fill line 179 on the schedule 3 and also T2091 to report the sale of a home.


	514-935-3321 Montreal’s Income Tax Specialists