Downloadable T5's | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

Do agree snail mail T5 should be retired 100%, it’s better for the environment and trees. However that does not mean you will get it any faster.
End of Feb deadline to get it all is not too bad. And you mentioned you owe tax, so you won’t file until April anyway.
I am in similar situation but given I have to wait for T3 receipts plus others, I just add receipts as they arrive. Just set aside enuf funds to cover any potential tax comes April. If it’s mostly T5 only for you, you should have a good idea how much u owe in tax without needing ur T5. Not a biggie.

Great point, they should give the client the option of receiving T5 in the mail (just like option to receive paper monthly statements, Stock annual reports etc.).

Make the T5 available on the logged-in website. Just send a notice by e-mail that there is a message on the site (like CRA does).

It's also available through MyAccount (CRA).

I fully agree that paper mail is a Security risk. T5's contain sensitive information.

So 3 sources of the same T5 increase the risk accordingly.

I like snail mail, but I've moved away from it as much as possible because canada post seems incapable of hiring people capable of putting mail in the correct box. At least 20-25% (the percentage continues to gradually rise) of my current mail is not for me and based on what I never receive, it seems most people keep mail that's not for them. There is certain mail like CC renewals which I've had to ask for them to resend and change it to requiring a signature or id pick up somewhere, because it was 'lost'. It's crazy and this experience has not been in just one community or province.

One mail I received in error recently, which looked like a T5, I had to put in the mail box to be sent to the correct address 3 times, because they kept putting it back in my mail box and it was nothing even close to my address!

.
When in comes to producing T5's, all the FI's I'm aware of are operating within the law, and CRA mandates. If that doesn't suit you, crying & whining about it will accomplish absolutely Nothing.

Your only real recourse is to petition the government to change the laws and CRA mandates.

'Good Luck' with that.

Dean

AltaRed said
All FIs can go PDF downloadable if the FI provides customers with the option to opt for electronic communications. It's on the FI to make that option available. it is not complicated.  

Totally. For example at CIBC, they give me the option to rec ALL other statements electronically, except the T5. Makes no economical nor operational sense. The retail head & technology head over there just a bunch of dumb ass.

phrank said ... canada post seems incapable of hiring people capable of putting mail in the correct box. At least 20-25% (the percentage continues to gradually rise) of my current mail is not for me ... 

I completely agree with phrank.
My similar experience with Canada Post is very unsatisfactory too.
Nothing should be sent via Canada Post, that contains secure information (SIN, DOB, etc.)

T4/T5 deliveries:

My governmental T4As were first to arrive, as noted here a week or so ago. Then, among the financial institutions, usually-disorganized Oaken/Home Trust was next!

All but one of the remaining ones arrived in March 1st. This is actually one day late for the end-of-February deadline for us to get them, but as my friendly letter carrier pointed out, they had a snow day here in Vancouver on the 28th, so I can't complain too much. She was struggling under the 2-day buildup of mail, most of it of course the cursed Amazon dead trees but also a heap of tax slips.

One FI, that holds only TFSA GIC cash for me, didn't send a slip because I only earned 12 cents there, for a day or two when funds were transferring between accounts.

Coast Capital, a well-established national credit union (they went national a couple of years back), is the lone hold-out. I called them to get the interest amount to get started on my return but, as usual, they wouldn't deal with me over the phone, saying that I didn't do enough transactions for them to trust who I was. (Only GIC business there for me.) Nobody else has such a whacko policy. They want me to go to a branch, which is a pain; there is only one branch downtown (Hah! try parking!) and another right in the centre of subway construction on Broadway, which blocks access AND parking. The next closest branch is in the island city of Richmond south of the airport.

I guess my best bet is to wait and see if their slips reach me this week. I REALLY don't want to ride my (motor)bike down to Richmond in the aftermath of a snow day with more forecast for tomorrow (the 2nd)! Taking the bus means COVID-19 risk as well as four bus fares (over $12!), because Vancouver doesn't allow transfers from bus to SkyTrain. Not gonna.

Mail vs Mail:
Well, not everyone has the same experiences, I guess. I've found Canada Post to be incredibly reliable, and online stuff hopeless. Not to mention that E-mail is completely unsecured - that's why the banks send you an E-mail to say you have a message on their web site, which should be more secure. But then, both CRA's and most financial institutions' servers get breached fairly often. And of course servers are often down for maintenance or failures.

I have gotten a neighbor's mail a few times over the last three decades here, but we have always caught and passed on the misdirected items save one time when another user at the same FI mistook my statement for hers. Most of the misdeliveries are mis-addressed by the sender.

Do the tax laws mandate still hard-copy slips?

RetirEd

The law and courts take paper records provided by any party very seriously.

It would be a mistake to say I'm "allergic to technology esp the internet" - I have been intimately involved in it since becoming a programmer in the sixties. I use it a lot, but am wary of the world-exposure of the internet and of mobile phone technology. I don't use anything on the internet linked to my live identity; I have more than a dozen computers, but only one connected on-line. My finances have their own machine with no external connections.
RetirEd