"The tax man's taken all my dough." - The Kinks There's an old joke among accountants about a newer, easier tax return the government is going to institute. The tax form has only two lines. The first asks, "How much money did you make this year?" The second line says, "Send it to us."
I was recently subject to an actual sample of this public sector nirvana. I received in the mail a T4A (OAS) that stated I had taxable pension paid of $3,300 for 2013. I was pretty positive I had never received a penny. (Of course, no one receives a penny any more, since they have been discontinued, but I digress.) So I thought I had better correct this before I think about filing my 2013 tax return. But whom to talk to? There is no phone number or any contact information on the T4A form. Eventually, I determined it was Service Canada I should contact.
I was pretty sure "Service Canada" would turn out to be an oxymoron. I did start off with the usual laundry list of mechanical numerical choices, none of which seemed to address my issue, but eventually I found a channel through to a real person.
Not only was she real but she could solve my confusion! I told her about the form and my lack of receipt of said funds. Without any indication she thought she was dealing with a moron, she directed my attention to the right side of the form - Box 22 to be precise. The one labeled "Income Tax Deducted." And there it was, the same amount as that listed as Gross Pension Paid.
They had simply cut out the middleman - me! There was imaginary income to me, which was taxed 100 per cent and deducted at source. I never even got to see it for a fleeting moment, to caress the largess, to have it visit my bank account for a brief respite. Nope, the full amount taxed away without it ever leaving the dreary confines of the Receiver-General's account in Ottawa.
It looks like I'll have the same relationship with Old Age Security as I had with EI - over 40 years of paying in and never collected a penny. (There's that penny reference again - I have to get rid of them before no one knows what I'm talking about.) Insurance is insurance and one should be glad to never have to collect on it.
And never having to collect UI/EI is probably why I now don't collect any OAS (after tax), which for a guy with no discernable skills is very fortunate. I certainly couldn't expect any redress from the government for the years of biased tax policies that didn't recognize family units.
Canada's worst finance minister since Allan MacEachen, Jim Flaherty, that great defender of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, is now backtracking on the promise of income splitting. He is happy with the inequity in tax paid by families in exactly the same financial situation. I guess he hates stay-at-home moms.
I don't particularly mind not getting the OAS because of the claw back. I do, however, wish the funds were used to help families just starting out by having a more equitable tax system to let them keep more of the money they earn. Unfortunately, government prefers the system mentioned in the first paragraph of this column.
