CRA really is amazing!

I just NETFILE'd my 2025 return for the first time today (April 24) and their web portal correctly notes that it has been filed and is already in status 'ASSESSED'. But it seems they also time-travelled 10 days into the future to do so! I knew those guys had a lot of pull, but they can even bend the laws of physics!


I am a big believer in using CRA's version of the T-slips and cross-checking it to the ones I got directly, but this year set a new low for reliability of the former: three slips that CRA got, I never did (and I am sure enough that they are legit that I accepted CRA's version); two others were divided it differently, eg TD Bank sent me a single T3 that CRA reported as divided into 3 separate T3's. Very odd.

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But once again it highlights the inanity of this "the banks tell us you made, you tell us how much you made, and then we compare the two versions" system (as opposed to "the banks tell us what you earned and we do everything else"). Surely if we were designing this system from scratch, we would do cut out the "taxpayer fills out a bunch of forms with information we already know" step.

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Also, the tax year end should be based on each person's birthday, not all in one day, to spread out stress on the system.

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Also, WTF do employers have to deal with all the faff of withholding ... but the banks do not? It seems like another subtle(ish) handout to the rich. Why is does some guy earning a "living" from interest on GICs able to wait until the end of the year to pay, and until then gets free use of that money, but some guy slinging boxes in a warehouse for minimum wage never even sees that money? Here is my proposal to make all of this simpler:'

- NOBODY does withholding
- taxpayer responsible for making installments, everyone has to, even at lower income range
- if you don't, or they are too small, charge high enough interest to make people not do that (also PAY enough interest on excess installments that people won't mind doing that)

... or, just make the banks withhold a fixed %, similar to how employers do.

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