Filing Tax in BC

robbieVan

Hey so yesterday me and the gf went into H and R Block to file our taxes and get our income return.

I got a nice bit back which I kinda expected and that was fine.

My gf has only made like 13 grand since may 13' since she has been and when we use one of those online tax calculators it was saying she was intitled to a lot back, more than she paid in tax basically because she earned so little.

However when we were in there the guy asked had she earned any money in Ireland for the jan to march that we were there and we worked it out that she made a few grand in dollars.

The guy took this into account when calculating and she didnt get that much back because of it he said. I think it is because they taxed her as if she had an 8 month tax year, he was just looking for rough income figures from ireland which makes me think it didnt matter too much.

What I am wondering today is that if she said she had earned no income in Ireland would the governments tax men here look into it and find out whether or not she was working in ireland?,

basically if she had lied and said no she had not worked in Ireland there's a good chance she wouldve got a lot back if it worked but would they have been able to find out if she was working in ireland and dispute her tax refund claim?

Scruffy19

Id say she could of got away with it by saying she wasnt working! There would be alot of paper work involved for canadian goverment to access a Irish person tax information from Ireland in my opinion but could be wrong!

Im waiting on my last T4 to arrive before i can submit mine! Did you get your refund then and there or did it take a few weeks?

robbieVan

Scruffy19 wrote: »

Id say she could of got away with it by saying she wasnt working! There would be alot of paper work involved for canadian goverment to access a Irish person tax information from Ireland in my opinion but could be wrong!

Im waiting on my last T4 to arrive before i can submit mine! Did you get your refund then and there or did it take a few weeks?

Gonna take a month or so, it all has to reviewed over the guy said cause we are newcomers and only worked a partial year

But surely if we had lied about it and it was a massive tax amount coming back they would've looked into it all a bit? anyone would try get away with it then no?.. don't wanna realise we are after shooting ourselves in the foot for a few hundred quid ya know

speedy2007

I may be wrong on this, but if your girlfriend worked in Ireland for a period of time, then presumably the Irish govt has already taxed her on that. Therefore, if the Canadian govt is including her Irish income on her Canadian tax form, she is basically being taxed twice on that period of income.
I'm pretty sure (but you should do your own research into this) that Ireland and Canada have an agreement so that people do not get taxed twice.

Did your girlfriend claim the tax back from the Irish govt before leaving (if so, then she will have to pay tax on it here). If not, then I don't think she should be getting taxed again, so def look into that.

speedy2007

http://www.irishcanadiansociety.net/tips_canadiansmoving_taxes.htm

Ok I just quickly googled 'double taxation ireland and canada' There is some info there from the point of view of a Canadian moving to Ireland, and how they can avoid being double taxed, so I'm sure that there must be a similar case when its an Irish person living in Canada.
However, they also talk about being resident ...I don't know if that matters. Ugh tax stuff is so confusing...having to file taxes is such a pain, but just wanted to show you this as your gf should def look into it further before letting them tax her so much.

robbieVan

speedy2007 wrote: »

Did your girlfriend claim the tax back from the Irish govt before leaving (if so, then she will have to pay tax on it here). If not, then I don't think she should be getting taxed again, so def look into that.

I think what it is was that cause i didnt work jan - march i was taxed as if the money i made was for whole 12 months, the way my gf was taxed was as if it was only a partial year, 8 months so its a different tax amount back

I dont know we did it yesterday so i dont know if we can go back to h and r and try change it, they are the number one place to do your tax here so i presume they what they are doing?

robbieVan

speedy2007 wrote: »

http://www.irishcanadiansociety.net/tips_canadiansmoving_taxes.htm

Ok I just quickly googled 'double taxation ireland and canada' There is some info there from the point of view of a Canadian moving to Ireland, and how they can avoid being double taxed, so I'm sure that there must be a similar case when its an Irish person living in Canada.
However, they also talk about being resident ...I don't know if that matters. Ugh tax stuff is so confusing...having to file taxes is such a pain, but just wanted to show you this as your gf should def look into it further before letting them tax her so much.

Thanks

She wasn't taxed on the her irish amount i'm sure, but what she made in ireland affected what she was able to claim back here!. i thought it was a bit stupid myself especially since he didnt ask how much she was taxed at home or anything just a rough estimate as to how much she earned there which led us to believe we could've said that she earned nothing and gained more tax back

speedy2007

Never used H and R block myself, I usually use those online calculators like turbo tax and uFile, but i'd imagine they should know what they're doing.

I had a friend here who was audited by the govt after her tax returns..she had made an honest mistake on it, but was quite stressed out having being audited. Had to send them proof of everything, so I don't know if it's worth the risk trying to change it now. It sucks though, esp because when they convert the amount earned in Euros to Canadian dollars, it will seem like a lot more was earned.

robbieVan

speedy2007 wrote: »

Never used H and R block myself, I usually use those online calculators like turbo tax and uFile, but i'd imagine they should know what they're doing.

I had a friend here who was audited by the govt after her tax returns..she had made an honest mistake on it, but was quite stressed out having being audited. Had to send them proof of everything, so I don't know if it's worth the risk trying to change it now. It sucks though, esp because when they convert the amount earned in Euros to Canadian dollars, it will seem like a lot more was earned.

Yea well that is another thing, they said cause it was a partial year and our first year here it will take a month or so before they get back to us, so we could easily be audited in that time and they could look into what taxes we paid back home, cause there is a tax treaty between the two countries so maybe they can find out easy enough

hegarty147

Hey I did my tax last week I'm in Ontario I am in the same boat as your gf I came over in may. Hr block asked me the same q and I gave a rough estimate. It made no difference to my refund whatsoever so I'm surprised it did for her

robbieVan

hegarty147 wrote: »

Hey I did my tax last week I'm in Ontario I am in the same boat as your gf I came over in may. Hr block asked me the same q and I gave a rough estimate. It made no difference to my refund whatsoever so I'm surprised it did for her

because she paid tax for lets say 120 days in ireland, what they did was put 120 over 365 and got a percentage, so lets say that was 30%, so her tax year is 70% here, the way i think it worked when i looked into the paperwork is that if she had said she had not worked in ireland her income would be spread over 100% of the tax year and not just 70% so she lost 30% of her potential tax return, there was a separate sheet she got which was called global income, it had all this info on it, so if she was intitled to $1000 bucks back she only got $700 because she paid tax in ireland for the first 30% of the year

basically she probably can claim her tax back for the first third of the year from ireland and thats why they didnt take that into account here