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CRA processing of Income Tax Returns
May 17, 2023
8:37 am
Norman1
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CRA will pay interest on 2022 tax refunds starting on the latest of these three dates:

  • May 30, 2023
  • the 30th day after you file your return
  • the day after you overpaid your taxes

Only a cursory verification is done initially before the refund is issued. One year, I received my refund about a week or two after filing electronically. Months later, I received a request for more information about some the items on my return, including a request for copies of supporting documentation.

May 17, 2023
8:41 am
ertyu
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Norman1 said
CRA will pay interest on 2022 tax refunds starting on the latest of these three dates:

  • May 30, 2023
  • the 30th day after you file your return
  • the day after you overpaid your taxes

  

Will that apply with the strike taking place though? I imagine it will be ignored for mitigating factors.

May 17, 2023
8:46 am
Norman1
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Haven't heard of any changes to the refund interest payable dates because of the strike.

Strike ended May 4.

May 17, 2023
4:27 pm
Peter
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Peter said
I filed electronically and my return is still listed as "processing" since early April.  

I finally got my Notice of Assessment today. There is hope for anybody who's still waiting for theirs!

May 17, 2023
4:52 pm
Loonie
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Our NOAs arrived last Friday by Canada Post.
Filed mid-April by accountant.

May 17, 2023
5:47 pm
AltaRed
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Hope for my spouse then too. Netfiled circa Apr 10th and no NOA in snail mail yet (she still wants her NOA that way versus downloading the PDF off MyAccount).

May 18, 2023
10:33 am
RetirEd
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Norman1:

Presumption

163.4 (1) In the absence of evidence to the contrary, a document purporting to be an official image of an eligible bill is presumed to be an official image of the eligible bill.

Admissibility

(2) An official image of an eligible bill is admissible in evidence for all purposes for which the eligible bill would be admitted as evidence without proof that the official image was created by or on behalf of a bank in accordance with the by-laws, rules or standards made under the Canadian Payments Act.

True copy of contents

(3) In the absence of evidence to the contrary, an official image of an eligible bill is presumed to be a true and exact copy of the contents of the eligible bill.

Now, that's scary. Talk about presumptuous!
RetirEd

RetirEd

May 20, 2023
2:03 pm
Norman1
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It's not scary at all. That just puts digital copies on par with paper copies.

World has changed. Affordable high resolution color scanning and printing make fake paper copies as easy to produce as fake digital copies. Main difference is that one has to spend a bit of money for the paper and the toner for the fake paper copy.

As well, there may not be paper original. Ontario probate courts now offer the choice of a digital Certificate of Appointment that grants probate. The digital certificate is a digitally-signed PDF file. No paper Certificate of Appointment is produced when the digital option is selected.

May 20, 2023
3:26 pm
HermanH
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Paper-filed Apr 24 and got our NOA May 17.

May 20, 2023
5:41 pm
Doug
British Columbia, Canada
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Norman1 said
CRA will pay interest on 2022 tax refunds starting on the latest of these three dates:

  • May 30, 2023
  • the 30th day after you file your return
  • the day after you overpaid your taxes

Only a cursory verification is done initially before the refund is issued. One year, I received my refund about a week or two after filing electronically. Months later, I received a request for more information about some the items on my return, including a request for copies of supporting documentation.  

Thanks, that likely explains why my dad was never charged any interest on his balance due because he paid his full balance due after May 1st, but before May 31st. 🙂

Cheers,
Doug

May 20, 2023
6:35 pm
Bill
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Due date for 2022 taxes owing was May 1, 2023.

May 23, 2023
12:51 pm
Bill
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AltaRed, below is a link that illuminates just one of the reasons I believe paper filing is more environmentally benign than e-filing, previously I really didn't think it appropriate to take up space articulating a long argument here but on the weekend I happened upon this. There are many more factors, this one only deals with some of the environmental impacts of "the cloud", you may find it (and the podcast) interesting.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/spark/digital-data-has-an-environmental-cost-calling-it-the-cloud-conceals-that-researcher-says-1.6641268

May 23, 2023
7:07 pm
COIN
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Bill said
AltaRed, below is a link that illuminates just one of the reasons I believe paper filing is more environmentally benign than e-filing, previously I really didn't think it appropriate to take up space articulating a long argument here but on the weekend I happened upon this. There are many more factors, this one only deals with some of the environmental impacts of "the cloud", you may find it (and the podcast) interesting.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/spark/digital-data-has-an-environmental-cost-calling-it-the-cloud-conceals-that-researcher-says-1.6641268  

Filing electronic is to save CRA time and effort. Doubt they care about the environment.

May 23, 2023
7:58 pm
AltaRed
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What the article does not say is how much paper equivalent all those data centres would be, how much environmental effort is required to make that paper, ship and sell that paper, how much material and energy is used to print on all that paper and the costs of storage of all that paper.

Here is one link discussing pages of paper per gigabyte. https://www.lexisnexis.com/applieddiscovery/lawlibrary/whitepapers/adi_fs_pagesinagigabyte.pdf Perhaps 100,000 pages per gigabyte to be conservative.

Then consider the globe is closing in on about 100 zettabytes of data in storage See point 35 in https://techjury.net/blog/cloud-computing-statistics/

1 zettabyte = 1 trillion gigabytes

You can do the math on how many paper pages of data that might be. I'd suggest the impact of all that paper overwhelms any environmental impacts of data centres in that CBC piece. Ultimately the argument does not matter. Digital information is both the present and the future if for no other reason than there would be no way to manage and store that much paper.

May 23, 2023
8:26 pm
Norman1
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CRA also does not have completely separate workflow for returns filed by paper.

Paper returns are opened and someone keys the numbers into the computers. Any extra documents included with the return are presumably scanned into the computers too. From that point on, the electronic information is used. Just as if the return was filed electronically.

It is unlikely CRA staff will ever retrieve the paper copies from storage unless the scanned copy is poor or the taxpayer complains that some of the numbers were data-entered wrong.

May 23, 2023
8:49 pm
AltaRed
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Per https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/corporate/about-canada-revenue-agency-cra/individual-income-tax-return-statistics.html up to May 15th, 28 million T1 returns have been filed so far, of which 1.9 million were paper filings. The final count will be about 30 million.

It is hard to imagine how/where CRA would store 30 million paper returns every year. Warehouse upon warehouse.

May 24, 2023
4:21 am
savemoresaveoften
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AltaRed said
Digital information is both the present and the future

That sums it up. Same with digital banking and electronics statement only. Whether one trusts the security or not does not matter, its the only way going forward.

I dont think a single person file paper tax return cuz they were thinking of the environment. Its more cuz they simply want to stick to the tradtional method or the fear/unease of technology. For some tax return that requires some special supporting documents, I can see why paper return will be an advantage too. For example, I rather provide all supporting documents upfront, rather than waiting for them to come back to me for it.

As for paper filing, the quick paper format from a tax software has a barcode that CRA simply scan and it populates all data, no typing required either.

May 24, 2023
7:15 am
Bill
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Agreed, I'm a dying breed re tax filing, clearly digital is the present and the future, at least as long as our power grids remain functioning.

May 24, 2023
7:33 am
Norman1
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There will always be paper filing; NETFILE personal tax software cannot handle all situations.

One situation I had multiple times is electing to defer tax on a distribution of spin-off shares by a foreign corporation.

May 24, 2023
10:42 am
Alexandra
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Years ago I believe the CRA used to convert paper documents to microfilm for storage.

Today: "CRA accepts records that are produced in paper format and later converts to a readable electronic format and stored" Not exactly verbatim.

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