Minimum income to get a refund | Page 2 | Income tax filing | Discussion forum

As I said above, no tax was paid or owing. And no pre-payments were made at source or by taxpayer. I am quite sure of that. GIS is tax-exempt. CPP and OAS together were slightly less than the first tax bracket after personal and age credits.

I do wonder if CRA made a mistake in calculating this. He doesn't want to get into a situation where he is later expected to pay it back. Even so, the amounts are strange and do not come anywhere near the value of the Disability Tax Credit. So it just doesn't make sense.
there is also no obvious explanation as to why there would be no refund for 2017 as the tax return looked about the same. Each reassessment notice came in a separate envelope, and they did not all cone on the same day, suggesting they were not necessarily reviewed by the same person, if they were reviewed by a human.

The only other explanation I can think of is that there is some benefit that would kick in but I can't think what it would be. There would have been Seniors Property Tax Credit and GST credit already. Medical expenses were negligible or non-existent due to Veterans' Affairs coverage. No real estate was sold during this time. have seen the returns but not recently. I could get access to them again but it's a nuisance to do so, so I wondered if anyone had any suggestions. The lack of explanation from CRA is frustrating.

OK, I have now looked at the docs for 2021 but not yet the other years.

The amount on line 26000 is just a few dollars above $20,000. (taxable income)

The amount on line 43500 is less than one dollar and was not paid as it's less than two dollar minimum to be paid. (This small amount was due to some interest received which had never been received in previous years.)
The Notice of Assessment agrees with this.

The Notice of Re-Assessment says that the federal and provincial tax credits have been changed (increased), and shows how much.

Their conclusion in the ReAssessment Notice is that they will send him a few cents shy of $200 for 2021. I think I will tell him not to spend it too fast!

??

I get my GST/Climate Tax bribe by cheque. It's too much of a hassle to have direct deposit to a special account, check for it every day and then wait for it transfer to an account where I can use it.

Remember, ANYONE who has authorization to direct-deposit to you has the ability to direct-debit you, too! (I just has this confirmed by RBC for a friend who just got his first job and was told he had to get paid by direct deposit. The agent who opened his new account told him that was an important precaution.) I avoid direct deposit and never leave any money in an account that will get direct deposits when I have no choice.

Getting a physical cheque is automatic push notification that money's coming in, and as they are usually post-dated I can deposit and use the cash on the day the cheque arrives.

I've seen quite a few people whacked by a cascade of default penalties after an employer or governmental agency discovered a mistake and then withdrew money before the account holder was notified. (Two governmental agencies promised me they never did this, but I can't remember which.)

For anyone wondering if I am smugly grinning about not relying on electronic records after this week's Rogers clusterfork... why, yes.
RetirEd

RetirEd said
Remember, ANYONE who has authorization to direct-deposit to you has the ability to direct-debit you, too! (I just has this confirmed by RBC for a friend who just got his first job and was told he had to get paid by direct deposit. The agent who opened his new account told him that was an important precaution.)
 

Never knew that. Most dont have a choice but to get their pay by direct deposit tho.
And that is most likely the main account for the recipient too.
On the other hand, I cant see the employer just direct debit for no reason. If they overpay you, you should be aware anyway and not just spend it all lol

On the other hand, I never allow auto payment of any kind of bills, whether utilities or anything.

jt4455 said
I did not work for a few years and filed returns with no income. I only ever got some GST credits and the Ontario Trillium payment.

Can i go back and just list as income a few sales I did on Kijiji or ebay, like $100 to $200. Would I then get any money like a refund from the government for those years?  

Back to OP and making it simple. In Canada, tax code is created in such a way that you usually only get back part of what you paid in taxes. Not more.
With some exceptions, but yours (small occasional sales) is not it.
Also, in general, Canada will only return you a bit of your taxes paid same year. Again, there are exceptions, but for more complex cases than you presented.

There was this once in a life time situation during the COVID, when government made a mistake at how they defined COVID benefit, enough people abused that government mistake and some got away with that. I am sure this won't happen again any time soon. Even then, you had to have sales reaching or exceeding $5,000 that year, I believe.

Keep filing taxes and you'll be getting all benefits you entitled to. Use free of charge software to file taxes, it'll take care of everything. See this link for a list of such free software: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/e-services/e-services-individuals/netfile-overview/certified-software-netfile-program.html

Don't try schemes that appear simple, they might backfire.

What about other benefits?

You may have better luck with federal and provincial government programs designed to help low income people, you might get some money from them.
Check forums where people discuss those.

You haven't told much about you and your situation to assess what benefits may apply to you: how old are you, for example. Do you pay rent? Do you pay hydro bill? Do you use public transportation? Some low income support programs might help you with those.

Also, as an example, if you worked in your life at least a little and had employer make CPP contribution, you could count at about $1,200/monthly in combined CPP+OAS+GIS benefits when you are 65. OHIP kicks at 65, too: free prescription medicine.

There is so much more to life than money.

You make good point, but you came with your question to the place filled with people whose one of main objectives is to make money, who enjoy making money and who routinely look for ways to make more money - and, perhaps, live modestly but die rich.
On top of that, the question you asked was how can you make a bit of extra money.

It's like coming to a pub to ask for a free drink, and then preach abstinence and tell pubgoers that there is much more to life than alcohol. 🙂

That's what happens when a mantra gets butchered from being passed on so many times.

I think people instinctively know that the mantra was originally something like

There is so much more to life after one has money.

One should have a look at Maclean’s (February 13, 2006): Money Really Can Buy Happiness… to see what some properly done research shows.

Norman1: Whether or not it's called "error correction," the withdrawals can and do take place. As I said, an RBC agent confirmed this last week.

There was a flurry of research on "happiness" in the two years before COVID-19. Most of the work that focused on the issues of relative wealth and sufficient wealth found that:

1. Happiness with one's finances was very affected by the perception of other peoples' finances.

2. It's not that money can buy happiness, it's that having ENOUGH money to lift stress ENABLES happiness to a considerable extent.

To sum up, essentially all the research found that insufficient money inhibited happiness, but "sufficient" varied widely.

Debt is a great stressor.
RetirEd

RetirEd said
Norman1: Whether or not it's called "error correction," the withdrawals can and do take place. As I said, an RBC agent confirmed this last week.
…

The error correction debits for direct deposits can take place within a narrow window. The customer can refuse the debit after the fact. The bank will replace the funds and bounce the error correction debit back. It is just like one can do with an unauthorized $29.99 debit from a biller one has never heard of.

Don't waste time opening extra accounts. The RBC agent doesn't know what he or she is talking about. Giving someone the info to do direct deposits does not authorize the payer to arbitrarily pull funds out of the account.

Many of bank reps don't know important details of their products. For example, quite a few of them will flippantly assure customers that it is easy to replace the bank draft if it gets lost in the mail on the way to its recipient. Just come in, sign a few papers, and a replacement draft will be issued.

One day, a $700,000 bank draft gets lost. Customer is asked to sign a few papers including an application for an indemnity insurance bond. The premium for the indemnity bond is 3% or $21,000! That $100 for a wire transfer doesn't look that expensive now!

Loonie said
I have found that in some instances a bank draft is unavoidable. The last time I bought a new car, 2016, the dealership required it, no other options.  

I had always been led to believe that bank drafts were solidly trustworthy. I brought one to move money to another bank and they insisted that it go through the same rigourous 5-day hold process. I guess banks can't even trust one another, with the amount of print fraud that can be perpetrated.

There's no phone verification of cheques or bank drafts.

I tried that decades ago. The bank the cheque was drawn on refused to confirm anything about the cheque. They wanted to see the cheque to confirm that I actually have a completed and signed cheque that's drawn on them. They couldn't view the supposed cheque over the phone.

If counterfeiters can forget a bank draft, then they can certainly forge the business card for HSBC assistant branch manager Alice Smith with a phone number of their choosing. How would TD know that there's even an HSBC staff member named Alice Smith or that she isn't an accomplice?

Only way TD can be sure that the draft is genuine is to walk it over to the HSBC branch and witness first hand HSBC certify the draft. That's not going to be done routinely.

As HermanH mentioned, the criminals are able to forge paper documents like cheques and bank drafts. Unless the bank draft is one of their own, a bank can't be certain of its authenticity without submitting into the clearing system and seeing if it bounces.