I’m reading The Elements of Investing by Burton Malkiel and Charles Ellis and stumbled upon some delightful examples of how people have arranged their affairs to avoid taxes in the past. Tuscan Bread “Centuries ago, when the Papal State dominated Tuscany, these rulers imposed an extremely high tax on salt. As a form of protest, [...]
Benford’s Law states that in many real-life sources of data, the leading digit is not distributed uniformly. Instead the digit 1 tends to occur with a probability of 30.1%, 2 with a probability of 17.6% but 9 has a probability of just 4.6%. In an uniform distribution, you would expect the digits to occur with [...]
If you are looking for free software for filing your taxes, you now have a choice to make. StudioTax is once again available for the 2009 tax year and in my limited test drive of the 2009 edition, I found it to have the same high quality and ease-of-use that I noted in my original [...]
One of the measures in Budget 2010 (Pages 356 to 358) will be of special interest to Ottawa-area residents who elected to defer taxes on stock options. Some taxpayers who took advantage of tax deferral on stock options experienced financial difficulties when the value of the stock they received when exercising stock options declined in [...]
UFile.ca, a web-based tax software, is offering several free ways for Canadians to prepare their 2009 taxes: Free File Friday for Seniors: On February 26, 2010, tax payers 60 years or over can open a tax file and file their taxes at a later date for free. Check this web page for more details. Students, [...]
In the comments section of yesterday’s post, Returns Reaper reminded other readers that Ontario residents have an additional reason to make a RRSP contribution this year. Ontario residents may be able to reduce their net income below the threshold for receiving the Ontario Sales Tax Transition Benefit by making a RRSP contribution. Also, recall that [...]
The QuickTax 2009 giveaway is now closed. The winner, Jim Squires, has been contacted but I haven’t heard back from him. Jim, if you are reading this, check your email for the winner notification and get back to me. If not, I’ll be picking a new winner. In addition to entering in the giveaway, readers [...]
QuickTax is Canada’s leading tax software product and it is easy to see why. When compared with all its competitors, QuickTax has the slickest and most intuitive interface and provides the maximum flexibility by allowing users to prepare their taxes with either the interview method or directly using forms or switching back and forth between [...]
Some of the media coverage on Ontario’s move to harmonize its sales taxes with the GST has verged on the hysterical. Our local paper, The Ottawa Citizen, for instance features an online calculator which purportedly tells you how much extra you’ll be paying on such items as gasoline, electricity, internet services, hair cuts and home [...]
When Ontario announced that it is harmonizing its sales taxes, the mutual fund industry went on a publicity drive shedding crocodile tears over how the HST is going to cost investors. I thought the chutzpah of an industry known for its sky-high fees complaining about investment expenses to be breathtaking (See post: Harmonization and mutual [...]
