Filed SERS requests last month. Have yet to see anything (dividend is payable in December…).
Has anyone seen any recent timing on receiving these back?
I filed them all the time. Anywhere from 6 months to a year processing time lately. CRA processing times are completed out to lunch. Had one review take 2 years, had another take 3 days. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Alrighty…we’ll just keep on keeping on then!! Thought it might be “speedy” now that it’s all online and we don’t need to wait for Canada Post (and that might be a long time, too!!!).
The last one I submitted was in early July and I haven’t heard anything back yet. I put the dividend payment date as of December 31st and told my client not to pay it until they got the approval letter back. It was online so I was hoping for a speedy processing too.
Don’t submit a second one or they will eventually process both of them - found that out the hard way when I called after a year to see if/why it hadn’t been processed and they said they had no record of it. I sent it in again but bumped it forward a year to be part of the tax return I was just filing then. Big mistake. That was one was mailed - prior to it being available on line.
What’s the big deal with CRA reply? You confirm the CDA balance with CRA prior to sending the T2054. If I don’t have absolute proof my calculation of the CDA balance is correct, I don’t do the capital dividend forms. I explain to my client the danger in not confirming the CDA balance first, and I’ve had no pushback. Doesn’t take long to get confirmation. I then do all the forms, get signatures, date the dividend 2 weeks down the road, and get the forms filed with CRA prior to that date so there is no question of whether the dividend was paid early. Then, in a year or so, I see the letter from CRA accepting the CDA payout and showing the new CDA balance. But, it serves no purpose. They’ve already confirmed the CDA balance, so their subsequent acceptance letter means nothing.
Some people are anxious to get at the cash to invest (that can be worked around) or to pay down debt (that cannot be worked around).
In the instant case for me it’s pretty basic. Client has only had one cap gain and that was two years ago.
Oh, and “comfort”.
Any that I’ve filed in the last few years have taken almost exactly one year after filing before we get the letter acknowledging that we’ve correctly calculated the CDA, I’ve always forgotten about the election by the time I get the letter. There must be a lot of CDA elections being filed every year.
I must be exceptionally stupid. Whenever I do a capital dividend, step one is always to confirm the CDA balance with CRA. Then, file the forms prior to paying the dividend. Why would I then be concerned about a confirmation letter I might get in a year’s time? They’ve already confirmed the balance. It’s a done deal. There’s no going back.
No - not stupid…“pre-emptively careful”.
As a side curiosity: What I’ve never researched is a “rescission” of a Cap Div…ie the Directors approve a Cap Div, then, on discovery that it was incorrect, rescind the prior Resolution and revise it as an ordinary (or Eligible) dividend…somewhat similar to a “rectification”. Hah! A quick search turned up this: Rectification - Not Dead Yet? - Rectification to reduce an excess capital dividend (due to a computation error) was allowed as the intention to exhaust the CDA was clear from the start. | Video Tax News
I got caught once, years ago. Wanted to pay out a dividend before month-end, meaning I would file the forms two weeks prior. I had requested the CDA balance a couple of months earlier. But, still had not received confirmation of the CDA balance. Since I had done this client’s work for 15 years at the time, I was pretty sure I had the CDA right, so I filed the forms by dropping them off at the local CRA grey box. Got home that afternoon, checked my mail, and there was the confirmation from CRA. I had over-elected by $270. It dated from somewhere in the 1980’s. Assuming the worst, I called the name on the letter. Guy told me they had an unofficial allowance of $500, so I was OK, but “don’t let it happen again “. Since then, I have never done an election without first getting the balance confirmed by CRA.