You can better check your tax return if you have used the CRA’s auto-completion

Posted on by Duane Roberts

Taxes Personal Finances

Jamie Golombek: Anecdotal evidence says the feature may be missing tax slips for some taxpayers

If you've used the CRA's Auto-fill feature, you may want to go back and check what you've submitted to make sure the information downloaded includes all of your tax slips or registered retirement savings plan (RRSP) contributions. If you’ve used the CRA’s Auto-fill feature, you may want to go back and check what you’ve submitted to make sure the information downloaded includes all of your tax slips or registered retirement savings plan (RRSP) contributions. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post

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If you’ve already filed your 2021 tax return and used the Canada Revenue Agency’s AutoFill feature, you may want to go back and check what you’ve filed to make sure the information downloaded includes all of your tax returns or is a registered retirement savings plan (RRSP) as some slips may not have found their way to your download.

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The CRA’s Auto-fill feature, first introduced in 2016, allows individuals and authorized tax preparers to automatically fill portions of the return with information the CRA has available at the time of the request, such as T- briefs, RRSP contributions and much more. To use the service, you must be registered for the CRA My Account program and use NETFILE certified software that provides the AutoFill feature. This tax season, there are over 25 different certified software packages and online web offerings to choose from.

The CRA receives tax information from third parties and should already have received most tax slips and other tax-related information for the 2021 tax year by now. Common tax information letters available include: T3, T4, T4A, T4A(OAS), T4A(P), T4E, T4RIF, T4RSP, T5, T5008, and RC62.

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The service also includes other tax-related information, including: your RRSP contribution limit, Home Buyers’ Plan and Lifelong Learning Plan refunds, non-capital losses carried forward, capital gains and losses, federal and state tuition, education, and textbook transferable amounts.

A potential issue with the CRA’s Auto-fill feature was recently brought to my attention by a retired Vancouver CPA, who is still preparing a few returns for friends and family. He noted that among the first six returns he prepared, the AutoFill feature was missing some T5 slips for nearly every taxpayer, despite taxpayers receiving the paper slips in the mail a month earlier. The missing T5s came from several financial institutions, including Toronto-Dominion Bank, Vancouver City Savings Credit Union and Canadian Western Bank.

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On March 20, I prepared a first draft of my own return for 2021 and found that the auto-fill download was missing a T4 employment income slip, along with an RRSP contribution receipt, both of which I had in hard copy or electronic copies. I proceeded to manually enter those briefs. A subsequent check on the CRA My Account site shows that those receipts were processed in the system on March 22, two days after I had prepared my own declaration.

Just last week, I received an unsolicited email from a second accountant in British Columbia who noted that several of his clients’ T4RIF and T5 notes had still not been posted to their CRA account.

The CRA said it is not aware of widespread issues with the Auto-fill my return service.

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“If certain tax slips are missing from these services, it may be that the CRA has not yet received the slips from the issuers, or the slips have been received but not yet processed through our systems,” said spokeswoman Hannah Wardell. “We would encourage all taxpayers to double-check all tax returns before submitting their returns.”

If you’ve already submitted with AutoFill, manually check your paper or electronic receipts against what’s entered in your return. And consider removing your 2020 tax return and slips to see if anything has been missed for 2021. Then you can go online and adjust your tax return. (You must wait to receive your review message before doing this).

Should you later be hit with a default penalty and interest arrears for missing earnings from a T-slip that didn’t show up on Auto-Fill, hopefully the CRA will be forgiving.

Jamie Golombek, CPA, CA, CFP, CLU, TEP is the General Manager, Tax & Estate Planning at CIBC Private Wealth in Toronto. Jamie.Golombek@cibc.com

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This post You can better check your tax return if you have used the CRA’s auto-completion

was original published at “https://financialpost.com/personal-finance/taxes/better-double-check-your-account-if-youve-been-using-the-cras-auto-fill-feature-to-file-your-taxes”

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