The After-Tax Effect
19 Digital Services from Canada Revenue Agency
Canada Revenue Agency uses a number of technology tools to provide individuals convenient, fast, and secure access to their own tax information.
My Account for Individuals
My Account for Individuals is a secure portal that lets you view your personal income tax and benefit information and manage your tax affairs online. My Account allows you to track your refund, view or change your return, check your benefit and credit payments, review tax balances, and receive email notifications. With a My Account, one can also connect to certified tax software to pre-populate a significant portion of your prepared Individual Income and Benefit Return (T1) each year.
Tax Tip: My Account for Individuals
Having a My Account for Individuals online account allows a taxpayer to make changes to a previously filed return directly. CRA will process these updates in a much quicker manner over filing an adjustment via paper submission. If a trade apprentice missed out on filing for the BC Trades Training Credit (regular worth $1,000 to $2,500 refundable tax credit in a single taxation year), then the taxpayer can make a request for a Change to the Tax Return for any of the last 10 years of filed tax returns.
Direct Deposit
Direct deposit is fast, convenient and secure with CRA. For individuals, you can receive payments such as an income tax refund or goods and services tax (GST)/harmonized sales tax (HST) credit directly to a Canadian bank account. Having direct deposit means that you don’t miss a payment from CRA that’s been issued. One of the methods to sign up for Direct Deposit is through the My Account online portal.
Represent a Client
Represent a Client is a service that provides another individual or business secure and controlled online access to your tax information. As an individual taxpayer, you can provide authorized access to anyone involved with your tax affairs. This can be other family members that are assisting with preparing your tax return or an accounting firm that will be reviewing and submitting supporting information on your behalf that has been requested by Canada Revenue Agency.
Authorizing Represent a Client for your accountant allows you significant increased efficiencies as the representative is able to view and make updates to your tax situation directly online. There are three levels of authorization with Represent a Client, depending if you want the representative to be able to only view the information or allow them to update information and accept changes to accounts on your behalf.
