Thursday, October 8, 2015

Is It Just Me Or What?

We got audited for our income taxes! This is the second one we have had and like last time it is for claimed medical expenses. Come on, we are 70 and 73 years old, expenses are bound to go up!

The big item was our travel medical insurance at $3,500 with the rest of our claim being my prescription drugs and a dental bill for Norma as well as a pair of glasses Norma was forced to buy here in Canada. Total medical deduction was around $7,000.

I dug out our tax file and found all the receipts. Now we have to write a bunch of information on each of them and send them in. Everything balances, no worries, we will avoid jail time.

The last time it happened was when Norma had her $40,000 dental implants done and they wanted all the receipts as well as a letter from the dentist saying why it was necessary to travel to Victoria about ten times for treatment and why we had to stay in a hotel each time (deductible expenses). That year took a lot longer to organize the receipts and letters but it sort of served them right as we found a receipt we had not claimed for so we ended up getting a cheque from them as a result of the audit. No such luck this time as everything balanced.


10 comments:

  1. Yeah, we were audited a few years ago for our son's school expenses. It all added up, and we were okay. Happens to the best of us!

    www.travelwithkevinandruth.com

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  2. Thats a good thing it all worked out.
    Even with my restaurant for 10 years have never been audited yet.

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  3. We don't have enough taxable income to claim expenses, just have to bite the bullet and pay the bills. But then we don't have enough income to pay taxes either so I guess we can't complain, we live on love?

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  4. Ahhh, you might as well blame it on Harper, you know you want to. Good luck with your audit though!

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    1. Harper is targeting me for voting NDP. Just because I am paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get me!

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  5. Email comment from Al:

    I'm wondering if you are being audited or if CRA is just asking for receipts to substantiate your deductions.

    In these days of electronic filing, CRA doesn't see any receipts and it looks like they have a threshold above which they may ask for more information.

    This has happened to me a couple of times, once when I claimed university tuition fees for our two daughters and once when one of my T-slips from my employer (with tax taken off) didn't make it to CRA from the employers side, so they couldn't verify the tax taken off. This was made more complicated because we were on the road in our RV and we didn't respond to the request in the time period asked for by CRA. That resulted in a small interest charge (which wasn't worth fighting over, but frustrating).

    I'm not a CRA fan, but the word "audit" may not be a true audit.

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    1. Al is right of course, a 'real' audit would be much more scary. In my defense though, the word 'audit' is used in the first paragraph of the letter they sent. On my Facebook page a couple more people have said this has happened to them this year as well. for either medical expenses or for charitable donations.

      I would hate for this to happen if we were on the road but that is some nerve, charging interest for claiming a legal deduction you were entitled to!

      Everything is ready to be sent except for labeling each receipt. We have to go out today to advance vote so we will drop it off in the mail.

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