In the past, some charities have involved themselves with tax shelters and issued inflated receipts far in excess of the actual donation. Taxpayers who participated in these shelters were reassessed, their charitable donation claims were either denied or limited to their actual donation and hit with backtaxes, penalties and interest. But the principals involved in [...]
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tabled his sixth budget in Parliament today. You can find plenty of print, broadcast and online coverage in the mainstream press but if you are so inclined, you can read the entire 352-page document here. For readers who would rather undergo a root canal than read a budget document, here are [...]
Quoting “government sources”, CBC News is reporting that Budget 2011 will contain provisions to forgive student loans for rural doctors and nurses and provide $400 million funding to renew the ecoEnergy Retrofit Grants program that was set to expire on March 31, 2011. Last week, CBC News reported that the budget will boost transfer payments [...]
Recently, I received an e-mail notice from Aeroplan warning that my miles are about to expire. I don’t carry much of a points balance because I’ve long given up on collecting rewards and instead prefer to carry a couple of cash-back credit cards. Any miles that I do accumulate through occasional travel, I end up [...]
A friend who lives here in Ottawa recently reported that she saved big on a recent vacation to Miami by flying out of Syracuse. The plane ticket on jetBlue from Syracuse to Miami for my friend and two of her family members cost her $650. The best prices she could find for flying out of [...]
The report put out by the Task Force on Financial Literacy came in for plenty of criticism because it was stacked with insiders at financial institutions that profit from selling financial products. The Globe and Mail’s Rob Carrick pointed out that Canadians can be made a lot savvier about money with better disclosure of fees, [...]
A research report titled Financial Literacy and Take-up of Government Benefits submitted to the Task Force on Financial Literacy contains fascinating information on what percentage of Canadians actually take advantage of Government benefit programs that they are eligible for. – 4% of eligible seniors are not receiving OAS payments; this rate represents about 160,000 seniors [...]
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty today announced the a set of measures that he said aimed to “ensure stability and economic certainty in Canada’s housing market”. The measures included reducing the amortization on new high-value mortgages to 30 years, reducing the maximum refinancing amount to 85 percent of a home’s value and withdrawing government insurance backing [...]
Mackenzie Financial is a favourite mutual fund company on this blog. In the past, they’ve put out such research reports as I thought I wanted an ETF or how top ten active funds are allegedly better than index funds that for the most part tried to pass along marketing spin as serious research and provided [...]
If you are an Ontario resident and recently received your hydro bill, you may find that you are paying much more for electricity these days. First, staring July 1st, 2010, the Harmonized Sales Tax added an extra 8 percent to your electricity bill. Previously, the Ontario Energy Board hiked electricity charges from 5.8¢/kWh to 6.5¢/kWh [...]
