I have had several people prefer to use email to send me documents. This has created issues for most of them. Here are some issues for you to be aware of:

• Everything that you send by email can be read by everyone in its path. And email does not travel in a straight line – People are surprised to realize that most emails being sent from Ottawa, ON to Ottawa, ON usually travel either through Michigan or New York State.
• Email may be mis-directed or mis-typed. I had one people call wondering where their tax return was at. Turns out that they emailed their papers to someone in South Africa.
• Replying to a previous email can route the reply through a filtering system which strips out attachments. Your documents are not received.
• Replying to a previous email, then adding additional versions of my email address results in both emails being identified as spam and the email by-passes my in-box.
• Replying to a previous email can result in the email being identified as non-urgent or from a conversation which has now expired. The email by-passes my in-box.
• Sending emails about taxes may result in the email being identified as spam and by-passing my in-box.
• Emails can expire. This means that your email isn’t seen.
• I am a bulk receiver for emails. This means, no matter what I do, it is entirely possible that your email will not be on my screen by the time I look at the emails.

I have tools which ensure that your documents are received and logged as received. All clients can use them. Those tools prevent all of the above problems.

I had a client who was handling his father’s estate. Unfortunately, the estate was in dispute and the court issued an order that no payments were to be made by the executor until the dispute was resolved.

While the courts had ordered that no payment was permitted, the courts did not order that the taxes were not to be filed. Accordingly, we ensured that the tax returns were timely filed to the tax department. But we were unable to pay the resulting bill.

When the dispute was resolved and the court order lifted, then the bill, with interest was paid. However, given that the interest was the result of the court order, I negotiated with the tax department to waive the interest. I was successful in those negotiations, resulting in a little more money to go to the surviving children and grandchildren of the deceased. The executor was pleased.

As clients are moving over to the new portal, I have added a link to the new portal on the menu at the top. Please note that you can use one or the other, but not both.

If you have not been invited to the new portal, you may use the Old Portal.

If you have, you use the New Portal. The new portal has a phone/tablet application which you can connect with using your phone/tablet. The links are available within the portal.

Receipt Bank allows you to quickly and easily process receipts.

For individuals who have to prepare employment expenses, or have small business statements, the app which can be loaded on your phone makes it easy to snap pictures of all those pesky receipts immediately when you get them, as opposed to handling them come tax time.

If you have a significant number of receipts related to your business, you can scan and then upload the receipts for processing, or even engage me to do this for you. For even more complex situations, it may be necessary to set you up with multiple business in Receipt Bank. Each person is unique.

Please note that Receipt Bank can’t handle:

• Multiple business within the same account (including rental and business), and
• Tax records.

Please ask me about the benefits and costs.

Client Comments

During the past week, I and a select group of clients have been using Receipt Bank. I asked for comments. Here is what they said:

Great tool for tracking daily expenses to ensure you don’t miss any deductions by misplacing receipts

Nicholas, Small Business Person

Nicholas was initially hesitant about using Receipt Bank, but tried it. After 50 receipts for last year, he wanted to also start working on the current year. He figures that using this software will save him hours. Nicholas started using this without any training.

The CRA opens for filing information returns on Monday, 7th January, 2019. These include T3, T4, T5 and NR-4 returns. Affected individuals include those with Trusts, Estates, Employees, pay interest or dividends, or who are a non-resident Landlord.

I have been contacting affected clients by email and by phone to get their information in. Please feel free to call me if you have not received any message yet.

These returns are due in the next month.