My client moved during the tax year but did not change employers. I have prepared the T777’s forms for both residences (as the office space square footage is different for each residence) but the software will only apply the deductible expenses from one of the forms. Can anyone advise how to get the software to apply the total eligible expense claim. I have selected the same employer but only one T777 seems to tie it to the T4 provided, it leaves the second T777 expense claims as unused and a carry forward for the following tax year.
The client has sufficient commission income to claim both home office expense amounts calculated.
I frequently have returns like this where there may be multiple businesses but the software only allows for one T777 form, or only one T777WS form.
Years ago I played with a trial version of DT Max tax software. That was one of the few software that allowed for creating multiple employment expense forms and also multiple GST370 forms. The software would then do the heavy lifting and merge the forms together for the final claim. I had reached out to Profile back in those days when I used it to also implement the option of having multiple T777’s, but my suggestions were not headed.
The trick I used when I run into these situations where I need multiple forms is I do all my calculations in Excel using a unique Excel tab for each T777 forms calculations, and then I merge the data into the one T777WS.
In a CRA review, what’s important is that you can show the separation and the calculations.
Years ago, I spoke to the CRA Rulings division about the GST370 forms. They told me that their intention in having only ONE form is that they don’t want people to be filing adjustments on that form (ie: people forgot to claim a GST credit for a second business they were employed by and file a new form. CRA doesn’t want this). They told me it was ok to merge the GST expense claim from all businesses together onto the one GST370 form at the time of filing, even though it is being reported as belonging to the wrong business, as long as in a CRA review, we can break it down to provide the individual breakdowns on individual GST370 forms applicable to each unique business with its unique GST tax number.
I’ve been doing it this way ever since. The T777 would be no different. Requires some mathematics with the merging, especially to properly calculate the business use of homes deduction when different homes of different sizes are used. But it’s doable. I’ve done it. Knowing your unique values in Excel for each business is key so that you know what your final balance should be when merged onto the tax program.
Yes, it would be nice if TaxCycle would allow for multiple forms and do the big lifting with the merging for us. But I’ll hold my breathe on that happening any time soon.