Auto-fill My Return

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DenisD
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Auto-fill My Return

Post by DenisD »

I was checking out the CRA site, looking for the 2015 T1, when I stumbled across this. Never heard of it before. About time.

About Auto-fill my return
Auto-fill my return, formerly called Tax Data Delivery, is a secure Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) service that allows individuals and authorized representatives to automatically fill in parts of a current-year income tax and benefit return.
...
To use Auto-fill my return, you must:
•be registered for My Account
•use NETFILE-certified software that offers Auto-fill my return

Auto-fill my return is not mandatory for NETFILE-certified software products. Some products may include the service and others may not. If you have questions about your NETFILE-certified software product, contact the software product company directly.
Looks like a lot of information is available. Wonder if many products support it? Too lazy busy to look myself right now.
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by DenisD »

Looks like SimpleTax will support it.

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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by Spudd »

Wow, this is fantastic!! I'm so excited! :geek:
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by SQRT »

I have used auto-fill for T3 returns. Works very well as it is basically a zero return. There is no support behind the form just fill it in and print it.
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by iluvnascar »

Sounds like a step forward. But bear in mind that the amount of stuff the CRA has is incomplete at best. You are still on the hook to be sure everything is included before you press the button and "SEND"!
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AltaRed
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by AltaRed »

I gave this a shot for my tax return. Worked slick but a few observations:

1. 2 tax slips were not yet available on MyAccount but warnings about that possibility are clearly spelled out by CRA and tax software (UFile in my case). But one can go back to MyAccount from time to time and download missing data as it comes available, e.g. T3 slips on REITs and ETFs at the end of March.

2. MyAccount does not differentiate on currency so if one has a T5 in USD, MyAccount and thus CRA does not know that. One has to be careful to go into the tax software entry and put in the currency toggle/exchange rate. I see this as a fundamental flaw if CRA doesn't know that, i.e. taxpayers could easily 'forget' to declare USD, as an example, and underpay tax.

3. With T4A tax slips, MyAccount does not differentiate on what type of money this is, e.g. registered pension plan, so one has to go into that form in tax software and toggle the right descriptor. Failure to do so won't affect the tax calculation BUT it will affect pension income splitting because unless that T4A is toggled as a Registered Pension Plan or similar, there will be no pension income splitting done in the tax software calculation. It took me about 5 minutes to figure out why UFile was not pension splitting for me.

4. In my case at least with UFile, downloading T50008 data created havoc because it assumed T5008 data was all Schedule 4 investment income, rather than only the disposition data for Schedule 3 capital gains/losses. I had to delete tht T5008 entries in my tax return. That said, it is easy to 'uncheck' those entries from downloading during the CRA Download process.

To summarize, I would use this feature again. It simply helps to avoid (numerical) data entry errors especially when one has a plethora of tax slips, but each sheet needs to be checked to correct for currency, T4A type income, etc.

It will also be interesting to see when CRA MyAccount actually receives T3 data for trusts such as ETFs and REITs. I suspect it will be faster for me to manually enter the date from one or two tax slips than to wait for the data to appear on CRA MyAccount.
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kcowan
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by kcowan »

I tried it with Ufile Online with no success. They tell me it is on the Interview menu but not on mine. I clicked 2015. Should I have somehow brought forward 2014 first?
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by kcowan »

AltaRed wrote:I suspect it will be faster for me to manually enter the date from one or two tax slips than to wait for the data to appear on CRA MyAccount.
Probably true. But don't you want to ensure that they are the same? To me that is the greatest benefit that we are both dealing from the same set of data.
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AltaRed
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by AltaRed »

kcowan wrote:I tried it with Ufile Online with no success. They tell me it is on the Interview menu but not on mine. I clicked 2015. Should I have somehow brought forward 2014 first?
I don't use UFile Online (I use UFile for Windows) but looking at the Support Community:

- This link http://community.ufile.ca/index.php?/to ... auto-fill/ suggests mid-March for UFile Online versions

- And this link http://community.ufile.ca/index.php?/to ... auto-fill/ which says UFile for Windows only... .which means not the Online version as of the February dates of posts in that thread.
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by HardWorker »

AltaRed wrote:
kcowan wrote:I tried it with Ufile Online with no success. They tell me it is on the Interview menu but not on mine. I clicked 2015. Should I have somehow brought forward 2014 first?
I don't use UFile Online (I use UFile for Windows) but looking at the Support Community:

- This link http://community.ufile.ca/index.php?/to ... auto-fill/ suggests mid-March for UFile Online versions

- And this link http://community.ufile.ca/index.php?/to ... auto-fill/ which says UFile for Windows only... .which means not the Online version as of the February dates of posts in that thread.

I just downloaded and ran UFile for Windows, and the Auto Fill worked with no issues.

My take on it? Meh. I still have to double check all the info that's entered, so really what time is it saving me? The one advantage I could see, is that if you had a small transaction that you might have forgotten about/lost the paperwork for, and this will be a good reminder. For example, I had some interest money this year from my chequing account, and the auto fill reminded me about it. This isn't typical for me as I don't usually keep much money in that account to earn interest, but this small reminder was good in case I had misplaced the receipt.
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AltaRed
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by AltaRed »

It works fine for UFile for Windows (worked for me too) but Keith was talking about UFile Online. Two different animals.
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kcowan
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by kcowan »

AltaRed wrote: - This link http://community.ufile.ca/index.php?/to ... auto-fill/ suggests mid-March for UFile Online versions
Thanks AR - that is a better response than I got from Ufile!
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by HardWorker »

I'm having a problem with my return, as well as my wife's. I found a similar question on UFile's forum, and I too had to delete the auto-fill and re-enter manually or you can't use e-file. Hopefully UFile will catch and correct the issue. This plus the new interface might make me switch to a different program next year :evil:

http://community.ufile.ca/index.php?/to ... -earnings/
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by AltaRed »

I've seen issues on the forums of most software packages so not sure any one is worse or better BUT I did use StudioTax for one return because I needed more than 4. StudioTax relies on one knowing what forms you want, i.e. no idiot interview process to start with, albeit newbies in particular usually need some of the hand holding the interview process provides.

What I don't know is if programs like StudioTax automatically do the optimizations for income splitting, assignment of donations, etc. that programs like UFile do. Someone else would have to comment.

Added: Since I don't have T4s and CPP contributions, that probably isn't an issue for me.
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Arby
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

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AltaRed wrote: In my case at least with UFile, downloading T50008 data created havoc because it assumed T5008 data was all Schedule 4 investment income, rather than only the disposition data for Schedule 3 capital gains/losses. I had to delete tht T5008 entries in my tax return. That said, it is easy to 'uncheck' those entries from downloading during the CRA Download process.
I noticed the same issue with autofill for the T5008 forms. I do a lot of sell transactions from my ISA at TDDI. I sweep all my dividends into the ISA when they are received, and then I sell portions of the ISA throughout the year to cover my living expenses. I ended up with twenty autofilled T5008's for the sales from my ISA. The ISA sales all showed up as Cap Gains in Schedule 3 (when in fact there was zero Cap Gain from the ISA sell transactions), so I'll have to delete all the autofilled T5008's.
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by AltaRed »

Best we can say is Auto-fill is in its infancy and needs some re-tooling. Better result next year perhaps.
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by long »

AltaRed wrote:Best we can say is Auto-fill is in its infancy and needs some re-tooling. Better result next year perhaps.
Agree. It's an infant... and behaving badly in my case - crashed Turbotax 2015 Standard when I requested my wife's data, after successful download of my own data (minus all those T5008s). In result all "profile" data was lost and it looks Turbotax has no auto-backup implemented. Have to do everything again starting from "transfer prev year return". This time will manually save my tax data file before downloading from CRA :)
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by SoninlawofGus »

AltaRed wrote: 2. MyAccount does not differentiate on currency so if one has a T5 in USD, MyAccount and thus CRA does not know that. One has to be careful to go into the tax software entry and put in the currency toggle/exchange rate. I see this as a fundamental flaw if CRA doesn't know that, i.e. taxpayers could easily 'forget' to declare USD, as an example, and underpay tax.
........
4. In my case at least with UFile, downloading T50008 data created havoc because it assumed T5008 data was all Schedule 4 investment income, rather than only the disposition data for Schedule 3 capital gains/losses. I had to delete tht T5008 entries in my tax return. That said, it is easy to 'uncheck' those entries from downloading during the CRA Download process.
Just doing my now with TurboTax Standard. I like how it flagged most statements correctly, including a couple I either misplaced or did not receive (and should have by now). Other than that, while I agree that you can't beat it for linking minds with the CRA, I have some of the same issues you flagged:
- The currency thing is a PITA and could cause real issues for some people. I mean, they know what it is; just do the stupid calculation.
- Same issue with T5008 as others. My income is twice what it should be!
- I was surprised that CRA has not received some basic forms, such as T5s from RBC for a couple of GICs that matured.

Definitely no time-savings for me this year, but I can't imagine not using it. Just seeing what info they have on us is invaluable.
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by AltaRed »

FWIW, it is likely not CRA's fault that certain T5s are not there. That would be RBC's responsibility.

FWIW2, I checked MyAccount yesterday curious to see if the latest T3 information for ETFs, REITs, et al that by law have to be made available by financial institutions by Mar 31 were there....and they were.

I hope CRA asks for feedback some time on auto-flll because clearly this it not totally ready for prime time.
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by Arby »

HardWorker wrote:The one advantage I could see, is that if you had a small transaction that you might have forgotten about/lost the paperwork for, and this will be a good reminder. For example, I had some interest money this year from my chequing account, and the auto fill reminded me about it. This isn't typical for me as I don't usually keep much money in that account to earn interest, but this small reminder was good in case I had misplaced the receipt.
In past years, if the interest income was less than $50 then the financial institution didn't have to issue a T-slip. So you may not get a T-slip from the financial institution, but now auto-fill will provide the T-slip information even for amounts less than $50.
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by HardWorker »

Arby wrote:
HardWorker wrote:The one advantage I could see, is that if you had a small transaction that you might have forgotten about/lost the paperwork for, and this will be a good reminder. For example, I had some interest money this year from my chequing account, and the auto fill reminded me about it. This isn't typical for me as I don't usually keep much money in that account to earn interest, but this small reminder was good in case I had misplaced the receipt.
In past years, if the interest income was less than $50 then the financial institution didn't have to issue a T-slip. So you may not get a T-slip from the financial institution, but now auto-fill will provide the T-slip information even for amounts less than $50.

Are you obliged to report everything under $50?
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AltaRed
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by AltaRed »

Yes. All income must be reported. I reported $2.39 of interest in my chequing account.... and USD $0.76 in my US based checking account.
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by HardWorker »

AltaRed wrote:Yes. All income must be reported. I reported $2.39 of interest in my chequing account.... and USD $0.76 in my US based checking account.
Well I guess I owe the Canadian public a few dollars then.

Like I said, this is a good use of the auto fill feature, once all parties figure out the glitches. I filed our taxes long ago, and I ended up deleting the auto fill and doing it all manually.
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by bill2009 »

My spouse and I were pretty pleased. she noted the USD thing and I think we'll have to convert manually in turbotax. I haven't tried pension splitting yet so the T4A gotcha may still be there.

Overall pretty good, should improve with time.
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Re: Auto-fill My Return

Post by SoninlawofGus »

I'm mostly finished now, and will use auto-fill again because I like the certainty of it. One somewhat gray area is the way T5008 forms are handled by both CRA and me. In my case, the T5008 forms I received from TD are simply print outs showing the transactions -- the sale of stocks. CRA shows that information with box numbers. However, box 20, which is my ACB (or book value), was left blank by CRA for all of the T5008s. I completed this information from my own records.

While I think this is okay, it is a little unsettling to be completing a box number that doesn't exist. Regardless, because CRA has half of the information in this format, I went ahead and completed it. Historically, I did not indicate capital gains in this way. I always used the more freeform capital gains form.

I had other stock transactions from an employee stock plan. Without thinking, and because I was already doing my capital gains stuff, I went ahead and added T5008s for those three small US transactions. It seemed to make sense because all the capital gains were reported in the same place. Only later upon review and reflection, I realized that this could cause a problem -- CRA did not receive a T5008 for those transactions, so no form or information exists in that format. This could prompt questions, so I deleted those T5008 entries and put them on the capital gains form. It all works out the same mathematically; it's just about how it gets reported.

One other thing -- I deleted the T5008 ISA entries in TurboTax, though I'm not sure it mattered. Those entries did not seem to impact my tax assessment.
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