Test your knowledge of tax topics
- "You can sell an asset for a profit and pay tax on the capital gain over five years, provided the sale is structured so that the proceeds are not collected right away."
- "The Canada Revenue Agency does not allow you to gift your poor performing stock to your children in order to trigger a capital loss and reduce future income taxes."
- "An RRSP contribution enables you to defer tax on that contribution until you retire or withdraw the investments.
- "The interest costs of borrowing to invest are tax deductible."
- "If you buy a mutual fund in December 2008 and the fund makes a taxable distribution in that month, you are not liable for the resulting tax in the 2008 calendar year."
- "You can reap the tax benefits of a donation to charity in your 2008 tax submission provided the donation is made before the end of February 2009."
- "You are allowed to contribute up to $4,000 each year to an RESP (Registered Education Savings Plan) and if you miss that contribution in any year, you can carry the contribution room forward to a future year."
- "You can pay for adult children to take care of younger children in your household and deduct the cost of child-care expenses."
- "A parent can take advantage of their child's unclaimed credits for tuition to a maximum of $5,000 of tuition and fees."
- "For a tax credit, you can include all of your family's qualified medical expenses on your tax return."
Tax Defenders™ Tax test answers :
- True. (58% Correct)
- False. (46% Correct)
- True. (93% Correct)
- True. (62% Correct)
- False. (71% Correct)
- False. (44% Correct)
- False. (33% Correct)
- True. (43% Correct)
- True. (60% Correct)
- True. (78% Correct)
The Tax test has been given to 1,565 Canadians. The correct answers and the percentage of people who answered correctly are shown in brackets. If a majority of Canadians answered wrong, it is counted as one of the four wrong answers in the test.
The survey found several important regional variations, including: Quebeckers scored even lower than the rest of the country, getting only five answers correct; however Quebec was the only province that scored correctly on the Canada Revenue Agency question on gifting poor performing stocks.
Atlantic Canada was the only region to correctly answer the question about paying adult children to take care of younger children in the household and deducting the cost of child-care expenses.
"This is one test where people can't afford to miss the honour roll," Cardy says. "There are tax savings Canadians can take advantage of both on an individual and family level. If they don't score this test perfectly, then they should speak to a professional."
The survey results are based on a Leger Marketing national online survey with a representative sample of 1,565 Canadians (18 years and older), with 787 between ages 40-60 between September 7th and 12, 2005. A sample of this size will provide results that can be considered accurate for the population overall to within plus or minus 3.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20. |
