by David Zhang – Korea-UBC RA
April is Finals Month, but don’t forget about your taxes!
April seems to be a bittersweet month for most university students. At times, it can be full of fun, and at other times, it is stress-filled. Besides being the last month of the university school year, unfortunately April brings along the 2-3 weeks of hair pulling, sleep deprived days that accompany exam season. Amidst these busy weeks, one can often overlook the fact that April 30th is also the deadline to file your Canadian Tax return. While some people may be lucky and have their parents take care of it, a lot of us will be left to ourselves to be responsible for filing our own Income Tax returns. When it comes to tax returns, there are two ways to get them done: do it yourself, or pay someone else to. Fortunately, at UBC there is a volunteer run tax clinic on campus that assists students with their tax returns. The people at UBC Tax will ask you to fill out a form regarding your personal information along with your tax forms and they will happily complete your tax return for you, free of charge.
If you would prefer to learn how to do your own tax return, so that once you graduate from UBC you can continue to do your tax return without having to look for a paid aid, then download the software call Studio Tax. Studio Tax is a free and safe software that allows you to construct your tax return through an easy to use interface that simplifies the process and reduces the amount of calculations needed.
When filing your tax return, there a few important forms that you will need. The first is your T4. If you worked during the past year, your employer will give you a T4, which tells you the amount that you earned in the last year, as well as how much you contributed to employment insurance and the Canadian Pension Plan. Another common form is the T5. This form illustrates how much you earned through interest on investments and for the average student, you will get a T5 from your bank for any interest you made off of the money you held in your account. On your tax return, you can also include amounts paid towards medical expenses and public transit passes. Considering that students do not generally make a substantial amount of income, including these small things will not affect your ending balance. However, if you make more than ten thousand dollars a year, then including these expenses will increase the amount of taxes you will get back from your Income Tax return.
Now that you have a brief introduction to filing your own taxes, I encourage you to learn more about filing tax returns and how to maximize your amount refunded, since you will be doing them for the rest of your life. Feel free to learn more by visiting www.cra-arc.gc.ca
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