Les Bonnes Choses

At the end of the day, as I was packing up to go pick up Pokey, Rebecca told me that there was a Canada Revenue Agency envelope waiting for me. Those with any sort of memory will recall that I've been in a bit of a tussle with CRA over an egregious error that resulted in them incorrectly calculating my income and arriving at an outstanding tax bill of nearly $3000. As we are now approaching the end of this year's tax season, you might imagine that I haven't been too eager to start my 2007 return until this dispute has been resolved, so I have been looking forward to receiving this envelope for some while now. I am happy to report that the re-re-reassessment has resulted in the reversal of my standing as a debtor to CRA, and, in fact, netted me an additional $40 deposited into my account.

Now, this isn't the first time this has happened. One year, as a result of a question I asked when speaking to a CRA agent about that year's reassessment, it was discovered that CRA had, for no particularly good reason, disallowed my tuition credit from the previous year (the wording on their reassessment notice left me unclear about what they were on about). The resulting correction returned a few hundred dollars to me. The moral of the story: CRA should stop reassessing me, because it seems to end up with them owing me money. Don't fool yourself, however, into thinking that I should look forward to these exercises in bureaucracy. The $40 I got back wasn't even close to worth the aggravation it caused.

Epilogue: A notice was attached that reminded me that the amount returned to me included $7 in interest which I must declare next year on my return. It is entirely possible that this marks the beginning of next year's story.