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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

*** 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

Most common deductions

*** 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.

***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

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:

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

  2. 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:

*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:

Expenses you can claim for those who Own their home:

**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:

*** 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.

*** 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.

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):

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

***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.

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

***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

*** 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

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

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:

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