r/cantax

I have 200+ T5008 slips on my CRA account this year, but a lot of them are from sales of CASH.TO which I basically use as my high interest savings account. I buy shares of CASH.TO whenever I have excess cash and sell shares whenever I need to pay for an expense or want to buy a stock etc.

I do have a decent amount of capital gains this year but these are from actual stocks I sold. These stocks weren't day traded, most were held for a while before selling.

The actual capital gains from CASH.TO are obviously very minimal.

I don't think this would be considered business income but I am concerned that 200+ T5008 slips on my CRA account will trigger an audit

Converted my home to a principal residence to rental in 2022. I never claimed CCA. In 2025, I moved back in, changing it to my principal residence. I plan to live here for 10+ years.

Can someone confirm my understanding of the CRA rules?

1. Current Taxes (2025): I do not report a deemed disposition or capital gains. I only report partial-year rental income/expenses on Form T776.
2. The Election: I do not file the 45(3) election letter now. I only file it with my tax return the year I actually sell the property.
3. Future Sale: Filing the 45(3) upon sale defers the 2025 deemed disposition. It also grants me the Principal Residence Exemption for the years I live in it, plus up to 4 of the rental years (assuming I didn't designate another PR).

Is this 100% correct? Am I missing any traps by not reporting the change of use now?

I just finished submitting my tax return today. No NOA has been received. For some reason every time I make an installment payment towards my 2025 taxes it's going towards my 2026 taxes. Which vendor do I chose to pay the balance of my 2025 taxes?

1. 2025 Tax Return Paying when filing an individual (T1) return

2. CRA tax installment (installment payment for the current tax year)

3. CRA past tax owed. Payment based on NOA, re-assessment, statement.

Right before I submitted my tax return I paid vendor: CRA revenue 2025 tax return and it went towards my 2026 taxes.

question for the masses...

Using StudioTax, living in Ontario

trying to transfer tuition credits from my kid's return to mine.

completed their return (first return for them, no income for 2025, only the t2202 from their school with $6k+ of tuition)

on their return, I designated $5k to transfer (the max), they're keeping the rest for future years

open my (& my spouse) return, go to the dependant section, and claim $5k as transferred from that kid.

shows up on my federal return (increased the federal credits), but doesn't seem to hit my provincial anywhere. looking at the ON forms, there is a line "tuition transferred from your spouse" but not from kids... ChatGPT says there should be an obvious line for it

it's making about a $700 improvement in my taxes, but I want to make sure it's maxed.

is there an Ontario tax benefit to transferred tuition from children, or not? I can't find anything elsewhere to support or refute ChatGPT

I’m a new homeowner in Newfoundland and looking for some feedback on my plan to take in two roommates.

The Property:

Upper floor has the main kitchen/living and 3 beds, 1 full bath. The basement has 3 bedrooms, 1 full bath, a rec room, and a separate walkout door. There is no kitchen in the basement and no structural separation.

Two of the unoccupied basement bedrooms are non-compliant (missing egress windows/HRV intakes). I intend to keep these rooms locked or used strictly for my own storage.

I’ll be renting 2 of the legal rooms in basement (rec room and bedroom) to family friends for $600/month each. They will share the basement bathroom but use the main kitchen upstairs with me.

The Questions I have:

1. How should I calculate my expense deductions (Interest/Utilities)?
2. Regarding the unoccupied basement non-compliant rooms, once I report my rental income, does the CRA keep that data private or share with city/insurance?
3. If the house appreciates by $50k in 5 years (hypothetically), am I 100% safe from capital gains taxes in this situation?

Appreciate any insights from landlords or tax pros!

I've been backpacking around essentially, not making a ton of money. No plans to come home immediately.

The only Canadian income I've made is negligible interest on a HISA. TFSA and RRSP are sitting doing their things. Do I need to file taxes? Isn there something else I should file?

At a bit if a loss. I'm working on residency in Australia, bit also plan to come back to Canada eventually.

Hi there. I have a question about mortgage interest write offs against rental income

We have a condo with a small mortgage (Mortgage A) we then refinanced the condo with Mortgage B and consolidated mortgage A with Mortgage B. We used the excess funds from mortgage B to purchase a new principal residence and rented out the condo.

My question is can we write off any on the interest on our mortgage against any of the rental income. We live in Ontario. Thanks.

My family friend (Canadian resident, Ontario) held approximately CAD $40,000 in a Chinese bank account as fixed term deposit in his name since September 2019. The funds were transferred to him by his father, who was a non-resident of Canada living in China.

At the time of the transfer, the father also transferred a separate lump sum to the friend's sister, who is a resident of China. The arrangement was that both transfers were intended to cover the father's future medical bills and living costs. In practice, the sister handled all actual payments for the father's expenses from funds she received. The friend's account remained untouched, largely because the father survived only two months after making the transfers, leaving insufficient time for the funds to be needed or drawn upon.

The father passed away roughly two months after the transfers. For the next five years, the funds continued to sit in the friend's Chinese bank account while the estate was administered in China. The sister handled all remaining financial obligations of the estate.

In 2025, the siblings agreed informally that each would retain whatever funds their father had originally transferred to them. The friend's share was approximately CAD $40,000. At the same time in 2025, they settled the estate including selling inheritated house.

Additional context: The Chinese bank account is the friend's only foreign asset, and its value has remained below CAD $100,000 throughout. Form T1135 foreign property reporting is therefore not engaged for any year, including 2025 onward. The only potential tax is on interests earned on this cash while my friend held it.

Key Questions on the cash/fixed deposit held by my friend

1. Is this arrangement correctly characterized as a bare trust, and does that mean the friend had no Canadian tax reporting obligation from 2019–2024?
2. Given that the friend held legal title but the beneficial owner was a non-resident, is there any Canadian income tax owing on interest earned in the Chinese account during those years?
3. Was the estate a non-resident of Canada for tax purposes, given that the sister in China was the active manager and the friend's role was purely passive?
4. Does section 94 of the Income Tax Act (deemed residency) apply here, given the contributor (father) was a non-resident of Canada?
5. From 2025 onward, what are the friend's obligations regarding Line 12100 interest reporting? Please confirm that Form T1135 is not required given the Chinese account is the friend's only foreign asset and its value is below CAD $100,000.
6. Is a Voluntary Disclosure needed for any prior years, or is the bare trust position sufficient to explain the absence of prior reporting?
7. As a conservative alternative to the bare trust position, should the friend simply file T1 adjustments on foreign interest income for 2019–2024 (Line 12100)?

Thanks in advance for your help!

We purchased our TH at 1.3M in 2023 when the market was ATH. Last year before Christmas we purchased a house but wouldn’t be able to sell the TH so we had to rent it out at a loss (nearby comparable property is around 1.1M). My mortgage + strata + insurance + property tax on the TH is around $5000 but can only rent it out for $3600.

However, I just realized that because I converted it to a rental property, now CRA sees the cost of the TH is only 1.1M, so even I’m able to luckily sell it for 1.2M in the next couple of years, I still need to pay capital gain tax! I’m already losing 100K but in CRA’s eyes I’m making money by selling the property and I will probably need to pay another 25K in tax.

If I had already known this, I would have just lowered my listing price further more to sell it.

Note: I know I can do 45(2) but as we’re having another house which will surely appreciate faster than the TH, it’ll be unwise to elect the TH as PRE.

If I fill in my return as a single person, I owe around $900. I did not claim any dependents, or a partner, or tax credits when preparing this. If he does his the same way, he gets back around $3k.

Then I change it to say I'm common law and enter my partners income where prompted (about the same income amount as mine), now I owe an additional $400. Still no tax credits for either of us. When he does it on his, his refund is reduced by half!

When googling this, I saw a blurb from wealthsimple that says the "family income" should only affect what tax credits I'm eligible for, but not change the individuals tax rate. So why did the amount I owe go up and his refund went down?

It seems we're both being taxed on our "family income" as opposed to our individual incomes?

Am I missing a box I should check or something?

Sorry for all the questions lately. Posting on behalf of sibling again

Does the Small Business Deduction limit of 500K mean 500K in income or 500K in profit for the person?

The person in this situation is a physician with a professional corporation. Which of these 3 understandings is correct?

Situation: Physician makes 800K income in their medical professional corporation. They pay themselves 200K in salary/income. Their corporation has 100K in expenses.

Understanding 1: They lose the SBD since their income was 800K (over 500K). Their SBD income is considered 800K.

Understanding 2: They keep their SBD and for purpose of SBD their income is considered 400K (due to 100K in expenses)

Understanding 3: They keep the SBD and for purpose of SBD their income is considered 400K (the 100K expenses is not counted).

Or maybe all of these options are wrong.

Good evening:

I just want to confirm if we are allowed to trade credit spread options (aka vertical spreads) in our TFSA?

The CRA website is somewhat vague about it, it just says we can trade any security on a listed stock exchange.

Thank You and have a great day!