Sprintax Canada FAQ

1. The first step is to create an account. Or to login if you’ve already created an account
2. Next, answer some easy questions to complete our questionnaire
3. Our software will then review your details for all applicable credits and deductions
4. We will then finalize the calculations and prepare your tax return
5. Finally, all you have to do is print your tax return, sign it and mail it to the CRA

Sprintax Canada offers assistance in the preparation of Canadian income tax returns according to the federal and provincial tax requirements (including Quebec income tax return).

• Tax compliance guaranteed
• Federal & provincial tax return guidance and preparation
• Complete tax relief review
• User-friendly system
• Optimized tax return
• Flexible service
• 24/7 Live Help

In order to prepare your tax return you will need:

• Your Canadian entry and exit dates for the current tax year
• All of your income forms, such as: final payslips, T4 slips, Releve1 slips, T4A slips, T4E slips, T5 slips, T3 slips, documents for rental or business income from Canada, documents for income outside of Canada
• All documents proving expenses in Canada: Business Expenses Receipts, Rental Expenses Receipts, RRSP receipts, Medical Expenses, T2202 Form, Donation receipts, Statements for interest paid on students’ loans, Receipts for union dues- copies, Receipts for paid instalments
• Your Social Insurance Number (SIN) or Individual Tax Number (ITN) for non-residents in Canada.

The Social Insurance Number (SIN) is a 9 digit number that you need to work in Canada or to have access to government programs and benefits (a SIN for a non-resident in Canada starts with “9”).

Your SIN is the number that identifies you for income tax purposes. You must give it to anyone who prepares information slips for you, such as: your employer, your financial institution, your University and your tax preparer.

It is important to be aware that each time you do not provide your SIN when you are supposed to, you may have to pay a $100 penalty.
If you don’t remember your SIN, there may be ways you can find it yourself. You can find your SIN in the following places:

• on your income tax return
• on your tax slips (T4s, T4As, T5s)
• on your record of employment (ROE)
• on your SIN confirmation letter from Service Canada
• RRSP contribution receipts, or
• you can request your SIN from your employer

If your SIN is missing or incorrect, inform your slip preparer. You must also give it to the CRA when you ask the CRA for personal tax information.

If you earn employment income in Canada, you must provide your SIN to your employer within 3 days after the start of your employment.

If you have lost your SIN you should contact Service Canada at +1 506 548 7961 for instructions on how you can obtain it from them.

It is possible as a non-resident in Canada not to receive income from employment in Canada, but from another source. In this case, if you never applied for a SIN in Canada and you left Canada, you should apply for an Individual’s Tax Number (ITN) for non-residents in order to file your Canadian tax return.

Taxback.com can help you with the preparation of the ITN application.

Joint tax returns are not filed in Canada. If you were married or had a common-law partner during the tax year, you have to file two separate tax returns.

In order to do this two registrations should be made on the Sprintax Canada website.

If your spouse’s or common law’s income was below the tax free threshold for the tax year and your income was above this limit you can claim the amount for spouse or a common-law partner as a credit on your tax return.

Dependent is a broad definition of a child or another member of your household. Non-residents are not allowed to claim dependents on their tax returns.

The 30 April tax deadline is the date by which all tax returns must be filed for the previous year.

If you owe the CRA money and you don’t file your tax return by 30 April, the CRA will impose late filing penalties and interest on the amount you owe, so the sooner you apply the better.

Instalments are periodic income tax payments that have to be paid on certain dates.

These payments cover the tax that you would normally have to pay in a lump sum on 30 April of the following year.

Instalments are not paid in advance; they are paid during the calendar year in which you are earning the taxable income.

If you earn income that has no tax withheld, or does not have enough tax withheld for more than one year, you may have to pay tax by instalments.

This can happen if you earn rental, investment, or self-employment income, certain pension payments, or income from more than one job.

The CRA targeted processing time of a paper income tax return is 8 weeks. However, this processing time depends on the CRA’s workload.

If you have filed a tax return in Canada for the first time, you should wait at least 16 weeks before contacting the tax office for an update.

You can check the status of your income tax return at any time by using the CRA online options through “My Account” or the mobile web application “MyCRA”.

You can find information on how to register for these tools at www.canada.ca.

You can also check the process through the automated info line at +1 800 959 1956 or if you prefer to speak with a tax agent you can call at +1 613 940 8495.

When you call to the tax office you will need:

• Your Social Insurance Number
• Your full name and date of birth
• Your complete address
• Copy of an assessed tax return or notice of assessment or reassessment, or other tax document and the amount of total income reported on Line 15000 of your return.

Your final result depends mainly on how many taxes were deducted at source from your income. You can help your employer to deduct the correct amount of tax for you by properly completing your TD1 form before the start of your employment.

If the result from your tax return is an amount due, it can be paid by a bank transfer or a cheque. You can find the best payment option for you on the CRA’s website.

In order to be sure that your payment will be processed properly, include your full name, SIN, telephone number and tax year (or tax year end) as a reason for the payment.

Remember, if you owe money and don’t file your return before the filing deadline, you may incur late filing penalties and interest added to the amount you owe.
You can find more information about interest and penalties here.

Your final result depends mainly on the tax that was deducted at source from your income.

You can help your employer to deduct the correct amount of tax for you by properly completing your TD1 and TP-1015.3-V forms before the start of your employment.

If you have an amount due to Revenue Quebec you can pay it with a bank transfer or a cheque. The payment methods are described on their website and you can find the best one for you here.

In order to be sure that your payment will be processed properly, include your full name, SIN, telephone number and tax year or tax year-end as a reason for the payment.

Remember, if you owe money and don’t file your returns before the filing deadline, you’ll get late filing penalty and interest added to the amount you owe. Information about the interest and penalties in Quebec you can find here.

The TD1, Personal Tax Credit Return form is used to determine how much tax you should pay to the Canadian federal tax authorities on your income.

Similarly, the TP-1015.3V Source Deduction Return form is used to determine how much tax you should pay on your income in Quebec.

These forms are very important and it is vital that they are filled out correctly as this could mean the difference between you getting a tax refund or owing tax to the Canadian government.

You’ll need to complete both a federal and a provincial TD1 form (if it is other than Quebec or a TP-1015.3V form for employment in Quebec):

• When you start a new job for the first time in Canada
• Anytime you have a new employer
• If you want to change the amounts from previous years
• If you want to claim the deduction for living in a prescribed zone
• If you want to increase the amount of tax deducted at source

The most common reason for filling out this form is when you change employers or start first-time employment in Canada.

 There are two cases where you need to be extra vigilant when filling out the forms:

1.You work outside Canada in the same tax year

• If you earned income from outside Canada in the same year that you earned income from Canadian sources then you might not be entitled to claim the personal tax credits that allow you to earn tax-free income in Canada.
• The key is to watch out for the 90% rule. In short, if you didn’t earn 90% of your income in Canada for that year, then the Canadian tax authorities will not let you earn tax-free income for that year.
• If you didn’t earn 90% of your income in Canada for that year then you should enter 0 in box 13 and tick ‘No’ on the non-resident question on the TD1 form.
• If you don’t fill this out correctly, you could end up owing money to the tax authorities.

2. You work two or more jobs at the same time in Canada

• If you take up more than one job in Canada, then you’ll be asked to fill out a TD1 form for each job.
• The important thing to remember is that you can’t claim personal credits twice.
• So, if you’re entitled to personal tax credits, you should only claim them for one job. Usually, it’s most beneficial to claim the credits for the job that pays the most.

Generally, you have to keep your records related to the federal and Quebec income tax returns in Canada (whether paper or electronic) for at least 6 years from the end of the tax year to which they apply. We advise you to send copies of the documents supporting your claim to the Quebec tax office and keep the originals in case they want to see them.

The T4, Statement of Remuneration Paid slip is a summary with the total income that you received from your employer and the tax that you paid in a particular tax year.

You should receive the T4 slip from your employer by the end of February in the year following the tax year.

If you work in multiple jobs in Canada you will receive multiple T4 slips.

The T4A, Statement of Pension, Retirement, Annuity and Other income is a summary that you should be issued by the payer if you received payment for more than $500 during the tax year from some of the following income types:

• pension income
• scholarship, bursaries, fellowships, artists’ project grants, prizes
• medical premium benefits
• fees for services
• self-employment commissions
• annuities
• other income from Canada not reportable on another payment document

The T4A slip displays the amount of income you received and the amount of tax deducted from this income. You should have a T4A slip from each payer and it is possible to have a few T4A slips after the end of the tax year, be sure to report each one separately on your tax return.

Form T2202, Tuition and Enrolment Certificate is the form that you should receive from your educational institution if you are a student enrolled at a designated educational institution in a qualifying educational program and paid more than $100 tuition fees for courses during the tax year.

Relevé 8, Amount for post-secondary studies is the form that you should receive from your educational institution in Quebec for the tuition fee you paid during the tax year in addition to your T2202 form.

You should attach a copy of the T2202 form to your federal income tax return in order to claim your tuition tax credits. If the last province in which you lived and worked during the tax year was Quebec, you should attach a copy of the Releve 8 form to the Quebec income tax return.

If you did not earn any income as a non-resident in Canada, you are not required to file an income tax return. However, you may still want to file if you are a student and want to use the tuition fee paid during the tax year as a tax credit for future years, or to transfer it to a parent or a grandparent.

The Canadian income tax return is quite complex. Various forms must be filed out, depending on your personal circumstances.

Generally, you have to complete different forms according to your residency status, your income type, your expenses and your last province in Canada.

The last province of employment is a very important part of the calculation of your taxes because the tax rates are different in each province.

If your last province in Canada was not Quebec, you will only need to mail one income tax return to the CRA for the federal and the provincial part of the tax payable.

If you were in Quebec at the end of the tax year, you must mail two income tax return forms – one for the federal part of the tax and one for the Quebec part of the tax.

1. For non-resident individuals who live in the following countries, provinces, territories, or areas of Ontario as shown below:

2. Your provincial Quebec tax return should be mailed to:

Revenu Québec
3800, rue de Marly
C. P. 25555, succursale Terminus
Québec (Québec) G1A 1B9
Canada

You can access your Sprintax Canada account for as long as you like! If you choose to use our service for future tax years, you can still access the same account.

You can reset your password by clicking the “Forgot your password?” link in the login area.

We’ll then send you a password reset email to the email address you gave us. Can’t see the password reset email we sent you? Check your spam folder!

Please make sure you use a valid and current email address and the same one that you used to register with Sprintax Canada.

If you have not paid for your tax return, you can simply go back through the steps, correct the information and submit your tax return.

If you have paid for your tax return, you will notice that your account is locked. To unlock your account, you can choose to register again with another email address and file your tax return once more. Alternatively, you can contact the Sprintax Canada team and request that your account be unlocked in order to update your tax return.

Sprintax Canada won’t ask you to pay again for the changed tax return.

Please note that you are allowed to change any piece of information in your account, such as your addresses, name and other personal data. However, to protect user’s privacy and security the user is allowed to change just one piece of unique personal information at a time and these are: your Name(s), Date of Birth and Social Insurance Number. For example, if you made a mistake in your Date of Birth and you want to correct it, you can do that, but you will be unable to change your name or SIN at the same time as those fields will be locked for editing.

If you submit incorrect information on your tax return to the CRA, you will need to correct this by completing and filing a T1-ADJ, T1 Adjustment Request form. If you need help with the form, you can login to your account and contact our Live Chat team.

You can easily pay online by credit card.

If you need to reprint or modify your tax return, simply login to your account and click on the “Download Returns” section on the drop down menu in the top right corner.

Generally, this could be caused by something in your browser or computer interfering with normal network interaction. The issues that you encounter within your Sprintax Canada account can be solved by:

• Logging in through a different browser. Some versions of Google Chrome do not comply with the Sprintax Canada software at 100%.
• Clearing your browser cache and cookies – A cookie is a small file that is stored on your computer when you visit a website and contains information about your previous interactions with that website. Sometimes cookies can cause problems with your browser loading certain websites, especially if a website has recently gone through an update of its layout. The cache file saves parts of websites you have loaded, but just like cookies, can cause problems if a website has gone through a design change. Note: Clearing your browser cache and cookies may clear information that is saved to websites you visit, such as any usernames or passwords that may be saved and automatically entered each time you visit that site.
• Perform a “hard refresh” in your browser (Windows: Ctrl+Shift+R / Mac: Command+Shift+R)

Most individuals have to file their return by 30 April.

If you have a refund or a zero balance missing the deadline will not reduce your refund and you can apply within 10 years after the end of the tax year. However, we recommend that you mail your income tax return as soon as possible because tax returns filed before the deadline are processed with priority by the CRA and you will receive your refund faster.

If you have a balance due to the tax office you have to file your income tax return and pay the amount due by 30 April. If you miss the deadline, the late filing penalty is 5% of your balance owing, plus 1% of your balance owing for each full month your return is late to a maximum of 12 months.

In addition, if the CRA charged a late-filing penalty on your return for any of the previous three tax years your late filing penalty for the current tax year may be 10% of your balance owing, plus 2% of your balance owing for each full month your return is late to a maximum of 20 months.

If you know that you have a balance due and do not file, the CRA can issue an automatic assessment based on the information for income they have from your employer.

It’s important to note that the late filing penalty and interest are not calculated in the result calculated with Sprintax Canada. When you arrange payments to the tax authorities you should include them according to the above rates and period of delay.

Your opinion of your Sprintax Canada experience is very important to us and there are a number of different ways to provide your feedback:

• Email hello@sprintax.ca
• Tell us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram

The Sprintax Canada team is ready to help! Simply log into your account to chat live with an agent.

If your individual circumstances are not supported by the Sprintax Canada software, your tax return may be prepared offline instead. Please contact us at info@sprintax.ca and we’ll review your case and provide more information on our offline services and prices.