For only the second time in my life, I filed my income tax paperwork myself. For years, I’d been using my guy, Dave, who’d never increased the $100 plus HST fee he charged me over all of the time he’s been doin’ ‘em. We used to use this time to catch up with each other, long after technology made it possible for it all to be done electronically, because I gladly made the drive to his city from mine for just that purpose.
Since having sold my vehicle a few years ago I stopped making the journey, but kept using his services as they were inexpensive – for me, anyway – presumably due to our friendship, but also ‘cause I never saw a reason to change what worked. It was familiar and comfortable.
Last year, considering the great strides I’d made with Make More Monie and my mission, I decided that it was the perfect opportunity to show my mentees another way to “make more monie” by doing my taxes myself, online, saving the cost of a tax professional’s services – plus HST!
I figured (correctly) the process would give me a deeper understanding of the financial world, something my parents, nor my older sister – who’s a financial planner and millionaire – never cared to provide me.
Like last year, I set aside some time to review all of the documents I was going to require having on hand. Between those I printed off from my bank, where all of my various savings and investments accounts – both registered and non-registered alike – are, and those named on the Canada Revenue Agency in my profile that were listed as required, all were cross-referenced and reviewed for clarity and understanding. Once assured I had them all rounded up and corralled, I called it a day. Stage One complete!
Stage Two entailed reacquainting myself with the account on my application and was pleased to see it had been populated with all of my baseline and personal information required for my profile and ongoing future access to the site. This included my age, marital status, income, investments, property ownership, etc. and like last year, things went smoothly. The process was even easier than I had remembered it.
Unlike last year’s filing, which required the information relating to all 22 of my 2022 stock transactions, this year’s only required information to be submitted of only a half-dozen or so sales of issues. These issues and their sales are detailed in the “T5008 Statement of Securities Transactions” slip produced by the financial services corporation I use. This still takes some concentration and careful keyboarding, but is not a problem. In fact, it’s fun looking back on the ‘fun’ancial wins of the year, tallying up those rewards.
Once all this information was captured and the T5008 trip down memory lane completed, I called it a day.
For the third and final stage, I processed the information gleaned from my T5’s (Dividends from Canadian Corporations), T4’s (Employment Income) and T3’s (Foreign Non-Business Income-Related Capital Gains). Following this was updating the section relating to those fees paid to my financial services corporation, for all of its work in facilitating my trades and assisting me in growing my net worth.
The last information to input and factor into the equation that makes a difference in the final result, was that pertaining to my RRSP. As I had not been nearly as able as many others are to contribute to this plan throughout my working life, I had – and still have – far more room in mine to contribute overall. Having said that, I’m limited, as all Canadians are, in how much annually I can allocate and thus shelter. For me, this limitation is, the lessor of ~18% of my 2023 annual earned income or $30,780, whichever is lower.
As this year was financially, for me, a good one, relatively speaking, I was able to contribute more money towards my RRSP than I had ever been able to contribute before. And from here, who knows? By continuing to work hard ‘n’ smart, and by continuing to improve not only my ‘fun’ancial well-being, but that of everyone on Make More Monie, we can all annually aspire to be in a position to enjoy payin’ up!
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