The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) says up to 2 million Canadians will be eligible to try its new SimpleFile system which allows you to file your taxes after answering just a few simple questions.
It’s currently only available to low-income Canadians who have relatively simple tax returns. What qualifies as low-income varies regionally and takes into account things like age and disability status.
Anyone eligible should receive an invitation to participate from the CRA through the mail or email.
The first 1.5 million eligible Canadians should have received an invite to the program earlier this year and new set of 500,000 invites were sent out over July.
The SimpleFile system allows participants to submit their tax returns over the phone, online or with a paper submission. According to the CRA website filing through the phone system could take as few as five minutes, while filing digitally or with paper would take 10-20 minutes.
According to a report from The Parliamentary Budget Office the new system if utilized fully would see Canadians receive more than a billion dollars each year in unclaimed benefits from not filing their tax returns.
Full details on the program including links to participate (provided you’ve received an invite) can be found on the CRA website.
Full Eligibility requirements
To be eligible for the SimpleFile services, you must:
- have an income under a certain threshold based on factors that include age, province of residence, and disability status
- have income exclusively from the following sources:
- Benefits
- Old Age Security – T4A(OAS)
- Guaranteed Income Supplement / Net federal supplements – T4A(OAS)
- Canada or Quebec Pension Plan benefits (including disability benefits) – T4A(P)
- Employment and related income supports
- Employment income – T4
- Employment Insurance Benefits – T4E
- Workers’ compensation benefits – T5007
- Social assistance payments – T5007
- Canada Emergency Benefits – T4A
- Investment income
- Some Interest Income – T5 (box 13)
- Benefits
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