Is it just my bad luck, or is Auto-Fill My Return less reliable this year. In my small practice (under 100 T1s) I am finding a surprising number of clients’ online record lacks the T4 or T4A for their major source of income. I’m used to missing T3s and T5s, the odd duplicated slip, amended slips labelled original and vice versa, hit and miss RRSP receipts and so on, but this is the first year since AFR started that I’ve encountered so many missing T4s and T4As. Only one has shown up on a second download a week or so later.
It reminds me of a story an old boss of mine told about a certain radio personality who used to leave the T4 from his principal job out of the shoe box every year. Apparently he was hoping his return would land on the desk of the one tax return processor who didn’t listen to his daily broadcast.
I only have one so far that I am fairly certain that will have a T4 that isn’t on the CRA website yet… The rest are good so far for me. That said - I don’t rely on the download to be complete. I have noticed that the clients often have slips before they show up in the download. I use it more as a check for things the client forgot to give me. I also have less than 100 T1’s to prepare however so not a huge volume.
Government of Canada - RCMP T4 slips are not available on AFR.
and here I though T4’s had to be filed with the CRA by February 29th… but then again fining yourself for violating deadlines doesn’t tend to generate much revenue.
I’ve had a few that haven’t shown up. BC Pension payments, a couple in Alberta (I think it was Alberta Health) and some random smaller, possibly hand-prepped ones. Took a long time for some RRSP slips to show up, and lots of T2202s not online.
I would say that because most of the people at cra are not in the office so i would think that no data entry is being done right now. That why i say to client bring in the slips.
What’s weird is that a lot of the missing stuff is all filed electronically from large employers/providers/reporting agencies - which in theory means that they are posted in the same manner…likely without review.
Shouldn’t one expect that they just “show up”? (To be fair, I have no idea what their handling process is internally.)
I have found in past years slips that should be available online and had been available online mysteriously get pulled out of the system. I was told this may happen in instances where the slips have been filed, but it has been subsequently discovered a large portion of those slips may contain errors… they can temporarily pull the entire submission out of the system.
I don’t rely AFR blindly either, but every slip missing from AFR increases data entry and review time. Since virtually all slips are filed electronically these days, the reason they don’t appear in AFR & RAC is a mystery. Maybe CRA needs to upgrade their hardware and/or software.
Of course AFR data must be reviewed. My point is that the less complete AFR is the less use it is as either a preparation aid or a review aid. What prompted my original post was the number of apparent holes in the system this year. OMERS slips were only one example. According to Wikipedia “OMERS serves 1,000 participating employers and almost half a million active, deferred and retired employees.” That’s a lot of slips to go “missing”, especially considering that they must be filed electronically in the first place. It’s not as if CRA had to key them in! For one client we have had to request a duplicate because the paper slip apparently got lost somewhere along the way. The same client has two T4RSPs from a major insurance company in hand, but absent from RAC/AFR.
I agree @keith1
There seem to be a lot more slips missing this year. But, I’m not sure that’s due to CRA hardware/software. I’m guessing a lot of it is due to issuers not filing electronically, and CRA having reduced staff that usually handles paper mail.
I sometimes get T2202 slips downloaded from CRA that do not identify the school/institution. Yet, when I go to CRA RAC and look at the slips, the issuing school/institution is listed with the slip. Is there some reason why this isn’t downloaded in AFR?
