The CRA is offering a new service this year. If the tax software you are using to prepare your return offers this feature, you can download information directly from your CRA My Account to fill in parts of your income tax return. I’m going to test using this near CRA feature to try to start completing my income tax return using StudioTax 2015.
What Do I Need to Know or Do Before I Can Use the CRA Online My Account feature to Auto-fill My Return?
You’ll need to be able to sign in to the CRA My Account system. You can test whether you can do that before you ever start completing your taxes.
I have a CRA My Account Userid and Password. I already signed in and looked at which tax forms they have on file for me, such as my T3s and T5s. So I’m ready to make a test.
I also have downloaded and installed StudioTax 2015.
Starting StudioTax 2015 And Choosing to Use the CRA My Account Auto-fill Feature
- Start StudioTax.
- Because I want to see what StudioTax can get from the CRA, I will not ask StudioTax to open a new file using my 2014 return as a basis. Instead, I will click on the button: Create a new return.
- Because I have already filed my 2013 and 2014 returns, I left the answer to the question as No and clicked on the Next button.
The Identification Page
Select your appropriate title from the drop-down list for Title.
I selected: Mrs.
Type the information in the fields
- First Name
- Last Name
- If desired, Initial
Click to select the radio button beside the appropriate choice for
- Check if this is your first return or
- Check if your name has changed since your last return, or
- Otherwise, check to confirm that your name did not change since your last return
My name has not changed.
Type the information in the fields
- Enter your Social Insurance Number
- Enter your date of birth, Enter Year:
From the drop-down list, for your date of birth,
- Select Month
- Select Day
Click on the Next button.
The Personal Information – Address Page
Type the relevant information in the text fields:
- “Care of” address:
- PO Box:
- RR:
- Street No:
- Apt. No:
- Street Name:
- City:
- Province or Territory:
- Postal Code:
- Phone Number: Home: Work: Extension:
CAUTION!!!: ***Do not provide your email address if you wish to ever get a paper mailed copy of forms such as your Notice of Assessment!*** If you provide your email address they will only send you an email telling you to go to the CRA My Account website and log in to read and print all your mail from the CRA. Many of us don’t want this!
From the drop-down list, select which province or territory you lived in on December 31 2015.
If you changed your province or territory of residence in 2015, tick to check the box and enter the date of the move.
Click to answer Yes or No to whether you home address is the same as your mailing address.
If necessary, from the drop-down list, select your current province or territory if different from the mailing address.
If you were self-employed in 2015, from the drop-down list, select the province or territory of your self-employment.
Click on the Next button.
The Marital Status Page
From the drop-down list, select your Marital Status.
If you want to, click to select
- Check if you want to create a spousal linked return and your spouse taxing province is the same as your taxing province.
If applicable, fill in the fields for your spouse
- First Name:
- Last Name:
- Spouse SIN:
- Spouse date of birth
And if necessary, check to indicate if your spouse is a non-resident.
Click on the Next button.
The Additional Information Page
If you became or ceased to be a resident of Canada in 2015, provide the date and answer the questions.
Click on the Next button.
The second Additional Information Page
If applicable, check if
The return is for a deceased person
If this is a pre-bankrupt return
And provide the requested information
Click on the Next button.
The CRA Questions Page
Click to select whether you want the CRA to contact you in English or French.
Click to inform the CRA of whether you hold or owned foreign property in 2015 with a total cost of more than CAN $100,000.
Click on the Next button.
The Elections Canada Page
Click to answer Yes or No whether you are a Canadian Citizen.
If yes, click to select Yes or No as to whether the CRA can provide your name and address to Elections Canada to use for elections.
Click on the Next button.
The Auto-fill my return Page
Finally! I was wondering if I’d missed something! So here comes the new part for 2015/2016.
First, read the info:
“Auto-fill my return
If you have a CRA Online My Account, then you can retrieve the tax data from your CRA account and use the data to auto-fill your return. Otherwise do not use this step.”
There are two help topics you can read by clicking on the links:
- Auto-fill my return help
- Learn more about the CRA My Account
There is a big blank area with the comment “The retrieved data will be listed here.”
I’m ready to try the test, so I clicked on the button:
Press this button to start
The Auto-fill my return Page
If you know how to login to your CRA My Account, click to check the box beside:
“Check this box to confirm that you have a CRA online access. Otherwise you cannot retrieve the tax data from the CRA server.”
Check your name and Sin number are correct, then click the OK button.
Read the message about Auto-fill my return
Note that you cannot pull the info for a friend, relative or other person without an authorization form, T1013.
Note that you must also make sure that you include information from other sources that the CRA does not yet have available before you file your tax return. For example, the CRA does not have all my T3 slips yet!
Once you’ve finished reading, if you still want to proceed, click on the OK button.
Your web browser will open the CRA My Account sign in page.
I clicked the button for CRA Login.
I signed in as usual.
The HUGE Auto-fill my return—Terms and Conditions of Use page will open.
Read through it carefully.
If you are SURE that you can accept these terms, click on the button: I agree
The Auto-fill my return –request confirmation Page
Check that the SIN number is correct; if so, click on Next.
There will be a message saying it is getting the data.
The Autofill My Return Progress Window
If all goes well, you will get a big green circle with a white checkmark and the message:
“The tax data is retrieved successfully. Press Close to manage the retrieved data.”
So I clicked on the button: Close.
Note: My browser session with the CRA automatically closed somehow without me clicking on the Logout button.
The Auto-fill my return Page
Now, instead of blank space, I have two boxes.
In the Tax data listing box
Show data for SIN: and my SIN is listed
Add the checked items to the return
Is followed by a list of items from the CRA My Account service including:
- T5 Statement – Payer’s Name Big Canadian Corporation
- T5 Statement – Payer’s Name Second Big Canadian Corporation
- RC62 Statement
- RRSP info
- Capital Gains Deduction
- Capitals gains and losses
- Non-Capital Losses
- Unhandled tax data
There are two buttons:
- Select all tax data items
- Decline all tax data items
The second box is titled: Tax data preview
And underneath is Print
The space below is blank.
I clicked on the Select all tax data items button.
That put a check mark beside each of my items from my CRA My Account.
The space below preview is still blank!
So I clicked on the name of one of the T5 statements, and it suddenly was displayed in the Preview section.
I looked through the different previews, especially for the odder choices like Non-Capital losses.
Strangely, there is no preview for my RC62 Statement.
I then clicked on the Add the checked items to the return button.
StudioTax warns you that if you already typed in the same T slip information you will now have it reported twice on your tax return. Since that could make you pay income tax on twice as much money as you really earned, you may want to make sure you review your tax return in detail before submitting it!
To dismiss the warning, Click OK.
Studiotax advised me that it will not automatically enter my
- Capital gains deductions
- Capital gain losses, and
- Non capital losses information from the CRA My Account download.
I’ll have to enter them myself or they may not be needed.
To dismiss the warning, Click OK.
To get out of the Auto-fill my return page, I had to click to Decline all tax data items to de-select the above listed unusable data.
Then click the Next button.
What Happens Next?
Now I’m back to the regular StudioTax information entry interview questions, asking for which T slips I have and for which I want to enter data. So I will continue with the StudioTax process for the forms which were not yet in the CRA My Account file.
What Did the Auto-fill Feature Put Into My StudioTax 2015 Tax Return for Me?
I’ll take a quick look, though, at what data was auto-input by clicking Finish.
Well, there’s my UCCB income on Line 117 so even though there was no preview of the RC62 statement, it came in ok.
And there on Line 121 is the taxable Canadian dividends from the T slips that are in my CRA My Account file. (But I still have another one to enter by hand that’s not with the CRA yet.)
On Line 121, there’s some of my interest income but not for the bank accounts that paid less than $50. I’ll have to manually update my tax return with that information because you have to pay tax on any interest earned, even if they don’t send you a T5.
On Schedule 4, for both the dividends and the interest section, it doesn’t actually specify what the income is from, it just says “From information slips.” I’ll have to edit that, if I can, to state which sources are quoted so I know for my own records in the future.
Or maybe I don’t need to! When I open the T5s the info about who paid what and why is listed properly. Good stuff!
How Do I Rate the CRA My Account Auto-fill Feature for Use with StudioTax 2015?
Overall, this has been a good test. It did find and bring in the data from my T slips.
It’s not perfect though because
- not all of my T slips are in my CRA My Account file yet, specifically some T3s
- it didn’t auto-fill my name, address, date of birth, etc. I think it’s annoying to type that in every year.
Will I Use the CRA My Account Auto-fill Option Next Year?
Yes. I hope they enhance it a bit more in the interim to reduce the need to type even more repetitive data such as my name, address, birth date, etc.
Related Reading
- Finding Information on the CRA My Account Website to Prepare Your Tax Return
- How to Check Your RRSP Contributions Using the CRA My Account Website
- How to Get Into Your CRA My Account Tax Information Online to Check Info or Send in Changes
- How to Change Your Tax Return by Filing a T1-ADJ Online Using Your CRA My Account
Join In
Did you use this new auto-fill feature to help prepare your tax return? Anything unexpected happen? Please share your experience with a comment.