Joint Account income taxes | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

It is up to the account holders to properly attribute taxable income proportionately to the capital contributed by each joint account holder.... regardless of what SINs are on the tax slip and/or associated with the account. One cannot transfer cap gains or losses to another taxpayer.

My personal experience over the years is you're more apt to be flagged by CRA for questioning if income is reported by other than the person whose SIN is on the T5, and often a year or so later. Just be prepared for that.

Bill said
My personal experience over the years is you're more apt to be flagged by CRA for questioning if income is reported by other than the person whose SIN is on the T5, and often a year or so later. Just be prepared for that.  

That has never happened in all my years of proper and proportional splitting along attribution lines....as required in the Income Tax Act. Never play fast and loose with income attribution, especially for larger sums. This subject has been discussed to death in many forums.

That is a lot of record keeping, to keep attribution correct. It would be so much easier to not comingle funds like that, especially in those odd situations where the secondary owns all, or the majority, of the balacne. Have 2 accounts with each being primary of one account and holding only that individual's funds in that account. I was circa 35 years old when I got wise to doing things that way.

The rules are that income is to be reported based on the contributions to the account. For example if one person contributes 60% of the amount in the account then that person is supposed to report 60% of the income the account generates, and so on.

I ignore the rules and report 100% of the income on the person whose SIN (usually the primary joint account holder) is shown on the year-end T slip issued, that seems to keep CRA happier in my experience. I've been reassessed in the past because a T slip with my SIN was not reported 100% on my income tax return, CRA's computer and their agents seem happier when the T slip SIN matches the reporting so I've been doing it forever since with no issues. Not recommending anything here, you asked experience and that's mine.