My client’s son passed away in 2024. He owned nothing but owed over $12,000 to a government unemployment type program. My client paid for the funeral, and used the CPP $2,500 to help cover some costs. 2023 wan’t filed - I filed his 2022 so I can view his information and could prepare his taxes, but do i want to? He would be entitled to a small tax refund plus the climate and other refunds if the return was filed.
Several lawyers told my client not to get involved and i agreed. Even if I filed the returns, we have noone who is authorized to sign. Am I wrong to tell my client to do nothing?
Let the public trustee figure it out.
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The Law Society will not permit you to give legal advice, so it would be safer not to do so. Tell him to do as his lawyers advised him.
“He would be entitled to a small tax refund plus the climate and other refunds if the return was filed.”
I would not agree that that is true - he is not entitled to a refund, since he is dead.
Also, he does not have a tax preparer to file his tax return, for the same reason (he is dead).
The father (or anyone else) can apply to the court to be appointed Administrator, or as Helga said, the father can highlight it to the Public Trustee and offer his assistance to them.
Thank you @helga_spence; that is what I concluded. @abechew309 I could have gone into a lot more words to detail everything - but for some reason I was still able to access his previous years tax information. I was able to get his T4’s for 2023. i should have said - he would have been entitled if he had filed before his death. My suggestion was that she not do anything. I do not ever give legal advice. I wasn’t looking for legal advice either. I was looking for thoughts from other tax preparers.
Someone has to pay for the taxes and this would be the legal representative. A representative will be needed to dispose of the body and that person ends up being the legal rep. At that pointt the mother becomes the represenative; her action will dictate the status.
Who signs? It would be in care of xxx and the legal representative signs.
I wouldn’t touch it if it was me. Leave it as is, and let the public trustee deal with it.
I had a similar file last year. Client’s sister passed away. No Will. No executor. The sister applied to the courts and became authorized by the courts to administer the estate. The deceased had no income, no assets. The sister paid for funeral costs out of her own money and the CPP death benefit so that her sister could have a property funeral. Came to me to file the final return. Once authorized on the deceased sister’s CRA account, I discovered the sister didn’t file two years of taxes (2017 & 2019) and would have owed CRA about $10k had she filed! The living sister walked away from filing any of her deceased sister’s tax returns, not wanting to deal with this mess. I suggested she contact the public trustee, but when you are still grieving, even that was too much for her. Easier to just drop it and walk away.