Digital News Subscription Tax Credit | Page 2 | Income tax filing | Discussion forum

I suspect the outlets are qualified to exclude those that don't do any actual general interest journalism.

There's no reason to give the tax benefits to newspapers that do nothing more than republish edited newswire articles.

There's also no reason to give the tax benefits to publications that are just vehicles for uncritical "advertorials" from salepeople trying to promote themselves and their products.

Perhaps that's the case, Norman1, though this link indicates it's in respect of original news content ("Original news content should be primarily focused on matters of general interest and reports of current events, including coverage of democratic institutions and processes"):
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/corporations/business-tax-credits/canadian-journalism-labour-tax-credit/guidance.html#h_2

The question still remains for me, i.e. what is the impetus for, the purpose of, this measure, what need is the gov't trying to address with this new credit? Knowing that would make it easier to know, in the absence of a list that has more than La Presse, whether or not a particular digital subscription qualifies or not when filing this year's T1.

For Bill, here's an explanation of why the tax credit was introduced.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/media-tax-credit-subscriptions-1.4923197

Thanks, Loonie, but the CBC article fails to address why this particular small corner of activity of the economy, out of all economic activities, is that important to the gov't to give it a separate tax credit line on the tax return, and to set up a fairly elaborate process of vetting including a Board, a panel of journalists, detailed regulations, etc, to determine what news outlets are "qualified" for this fairly small credit on the tax return? This from a gov't that is handing out money as fast as it can while admitting they're not being very careful about unqualified people receiving these much larger amounts. Anyway, no big deal, no need to pursue further here, I think I get what's going on.

You're allowed to claim the difference between a paper only subscription and your paper & digital subscription. If no difference you are allowed to claim what the Star charges for digital only subscription. If no such thing you can claim what similar outlets to the Star charge for their digital subscriptions. I'm not sure if that's 100% right, I stand to be corrected.

The Star - Subscribe has the pricing for home delivery ($5.99/week) and ePaper edition ($2.99/week).

I suspect one can claim around $2.99/week.

I agree, as the home delivery cost includes the online subscription in this case (which I presume is the norm).

But I'm not buying that this gov't has it as a priority that rural folks don't get hosed by local politicians, especially in an age when everybody's got access to all that info on the internet. Plus CBC article link makes no mention of rural focus, nor do the provisions have any wording that suggests the credit is targeted to folks outside large metro areas. But doesn't much matter, I'm sure we all have our own ideas about what motivated this as a priority for a new tax credit.

I imagine most of us pay the bill by credit card or PAD, so it shouldn't be very difficult to establish what you actually paid. You will need that info IF you ARE audited, so you should keep the documents.

Info in #13 above suggests that CRA believes the qualified news organization "should" provide customers with a relevant tax receipt. "Should" seems an odd word in this context. Will they or won't they? If they do, it will add operating costs for next year's sub!

Starweek Magazine is the weekly TV listings. Not sure if the Toronto Star still offers it in print form. The printed magazine was an extra 50¢/week option for home delivery subscribers.

Maybe dock ½ x 50¢/week = 25¢/week off the $2.99/week to remove the value of the digital Starweek Magazine?

It doesn't matter whether the home delivery subscriber accesses the digital version of the paper or not. The Toronto Star is not paying their journalists to write one story for the printed paper and another story for the digital version of the paper. The digital version of the paper is not a different newspaper.