Is it stressful tracking down your T-slips? Missing just one of them can be the difference between an easy tax filing season and not reporting income, resulting in penalties and interest. Do you find that you have to double and triple check your entries for accuracy? How about dealing with the calculation of carry-forward amounts?
If there was only a really easy way to ensure that when filing your personal tax return that each and every slip that was on file with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) was included in your tax filing. That would help a lot! So would having the expertise around carry-forward amounts to ensure that was correct too.
Well, thankfully, TurboTax has you covered with the Auto-Fill My Return (AFR) feature.
How Auto-Fill My Return Works
As an employee working for someone you will receive a T4 – Statement of Remuneration Paid slip. If you have investments and receive trust income or interest from a bank or investment firm, you may be issued a T5 – Statement of Investment Income or a T3 – Statement of Trust Income Allocations and Designations. Or maybe you or your broker disposed of some securities or shares, in this case you might be issued a T5008 – Statement of Securities Transactions slip.
If you are receiving a private pension, Canada Pension Plan (CPP), or Old Age Security (OAS) benefits, you will be issued a T4A Slip specific to that pension. If you received Employment Insurance (EI) or made a repayment of EI benefits, you will receive a T4E – Statement of Employment Insurance Benefits slip.
When you are issued one of these tax slips, a copy of that same slip is sent to the CRA, which means they already have the majority of your income slips before you file your return. These copies are assigned to your Social Insurance Number (SIN) and are housed in your CRA My Account, along with your previously filed tax returns, carry-forward amounts, and other tax-related data. When you file your income tax return, the CRA has the ability and responsibility to compare what you filed on your return with what is already on your account. And if there are differences, they will want to know why.
The CRA receives the tax information from employers, banks and other third parties, and should have most tax information slips and other tax-related information for the tax year by mid-March of the following year. If the information is not available, it is possible that the CRA has not yet received it. If that is the case, please try the service again later.
All editions of TurboTax software, (including TurboTax Online FREE), support the Auto-Fill My Return feature and automatically transfer your data to the proper spots within your tax return. With just a few clicks, your tax return is filled with the most accurate and up-to-date information available, right from the CRA. For a complete list of tax information slips and client data available, see this CRA link: Auto-Fill My Return.
Benefits of using Auto-Fill My Return
Accuracy is of critical importance when preparing your tax return because the smallest typo, such as a misplaced decimal, or missing a T-slip, can have significant negative consequences.
- Auto-fill my return transfers your information directly from your CRA My Account, minimizing the chance of typing errors, incorrect entries and missing slips. Using this feature means you can rest easy knowing your information is accurate, down to the last cent.
- Auto-fill my return saves you time, both before and during the process of filing your taxes. For most Canadians, the process of filing your tax return begins long before you sit down to prepare it. There are t-slips to gather, carry-forward amounts to calculate, and RRSP contribution receipts to find.
This feature is a game-changer! If you have ever missed a t-slip and had to deal with that side of the CRA, then you likely wish that you knew about this feature earlier.
Security
When it comes to the security of your data, TurboTax makes this their number one priority, year-after-year. That is why millions of Canadians trust TurboTax to protect their personal information. Using 128-bit encryption on all of their sites, (in case you have no idea what that means, it is the same encryption that banks use for online banking), then you understand that TurboTax is doing everything in their power to ensure that your data, both imported and manually entered, is always safe and secure.
You will need a CRA My Account in order to use Auto-Fill My Return. Haven’t set up your CRA My Account yet? Let’s get started setting up that account and you’ll be one step closer to importing your tax slip information and filing your tax return.
