Whether you’ve already done your taxes for the year or not, I wanted to dedicate this episode to the tax optimizations that you can do to save tax not only this year, but for future years as well.

To help me with this, I’ve brought on accountant Neal Winokur on the show. Neal is a Chartered Professional Accountant here in Canada, and he’s the author of the of the book, The Grumpy Accountant. You might have also seen some of his writing over at the National Post.

He has been an accountant here in Canada for over ten years so I thought it would be great to pick his brain on what all us non-accounts can do to save money on taxes for this year and for years to come.

You’ll also learn what we can all do, to ensure that we aren’t missing out on any credits and benefits that we are eligible for from the Government of Canada.

Changes happen every year to the different credits and benefits that the government offers, so how can we ensure that we don’t miss out on any of the ones that apply to us, and that we aren’t leaving money on the table?

So enjoy the episode, thanks for tuning in, and now let’s get into the interview.

Questions Covered:

1. To kick things off, let’s start with the question on everyone’s minds, “How can we pay less in taxes?”. And more specifically, what are the tools that we Canadians can use, to pay less in tax?

2. For this episode, I primarily wanted to focus on how we can reduce our taxes on an ongoing basis (not just for this year), but before we do that, considering that taxes are due at the end of this month, is there anything new for this year that we need to know about, when filing our taxes by the end of April?

3. One of the things that I’m sure many of us wonder about every year, is “Are there some benefits, tax credits, and/or exemptions that we’re missing out on, resulting in us either receiving less money from the government, or paying more than we have to in taxes”.

4. What's the easiest way to screen the different credits and other Canadian government benefits to make sure we're getting all of the ones we’re eligible for?

5. How do you keep up to date on changes in tax laws? Is there something that we non-accountants can do to be informed as changes occur so that we can determine if they actually impact us? (i.e. any favourite resources)

6. Speaking of good resources, can you tell us more about your book and what we can learn from it?

7. Is there any low hanging fruit in terms of tax savings that you find Canadians sometimes miss?

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