[GNC] How to treat benefit payments from government?

[Adrien Monteleone]

Good to know, thanks!

Regards,
Adrien

> On Apr 19, 2019, at 6:17 AM, R. Victor Klassen <rvklassen at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Both the Trillium benefit and the HST/GST credit are essentially refundable tax credits, except that are paid out either over a period of a year beginning some time after the filing deadline, or in a lump sum (but later).  Unlike in the US where state tax refunds are income for federal purposes, provincial and federal taxes do not interact.  So these are purely tax-free.
> 
>> On Apr 18, 2019, at 9:36 AM, Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:
>> 
>> Michael,
>> 
>> Yep, I’m well aware. I just looked over my Mom’s filing before she mailed it off. Certainly, having to massage the raw number two or three times with various figures from multiple lines on several different schedules just to figure out if her SS payments were taxable I can attest you are correct, that my question isn’t always a simple one.
>> 
>> But even an answer of ‘depends’ is an answer that you can take some action on.
>> 
>> Though I don’t live in Canada, I’m still curious to see how that one should be handled.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Adrien
>> 
>>> On Apr 18, 2019, at 8:23 AM, Michael or Penny Novack <stepbystepfarm at comcast.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 4/17/2019 6:16 PM, Adrien Monteleone wrote:
>>>> Someone on the list from Canada (even better, a local CPA) should offer better advice, but the first question you probably want answered is, “Is this taxable next year?”
>>>> 
>>>> That will likely influence how you record it now.
>>>> 
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Adrien
>>> Adrian, it could be worse than that (in the general case). How about SS pension payments here in the US? The question "is this taxable" cannot be answered based upon the pension payment alone because it will depend on OTHER income received. Thus while you could possibly "know" (barring unexpected events) that none of it will be taxable (your estimate of other income is below X) or that 85% of it will be taxable (your estimate of other income is above Y) what you enter COULD be wrong << in the former case you ended up receiving some windfall and in the latter, suffered some economic disaster >> But SOME of us, alas, normally have an "other" income between X and Y and always have a messy calculation to perform come tax time to figure out how much of our SS was taxable.
>>> 
>>> Michael D Novack