Volunteers helping low-income Calgarians file their 2023 taxes say that tax season shouldn’t be viewed as a burden, but rather a financial opportunity.

In many cases, especially for those with the lowest incomes, tax season means that instead of owing the government, the government instead owes you.

Filing taxes also unlocks access to periodic payments like GST rebates, the Canada Carbon Rebate, and child care benefits which can net individuals and families thousands of dollars each year.

“There’s a whole series of programs that various governments have said ‘this is a good thing to put in play,'” said Dale Huntingford, a tax volunteer with Momentum.

“If you’re a relatively low income, but you’re out there working, then the government says we’d like to reward you, those becomes tax credits. In some cases, reducing your income tax to zero, and some of them are even refundable.”

Huntingford was one of many volunteers who were participating in Momentum’s first ever in-house tax clinic on April 11—just a few weeks shy of the April 30 deadline to file taxes in Canada.

He said that helping Momentum’s clients was a rewarding way of helping them get a financial leg up during tax season, and that individuals who are anxious about doing their taxes shouldn’t be.

“Canada Revenue really supports us volunteers. We have all the training we need, we have special phone lines, and if I’m sitting with you as a client, we can pick up the phone and get answers right away from a CRA agent. Many of us aren’t comfortable with government forms or filling out numbers, or maybe even dealing with computers. So, as a volunteer I can ease that,” Huntingford said.

“The tax system has changed from you have to collect a whole two handfuls worth of paper and sit down with a pencil and figure it all out. It’s now a system where Canada Revenue has a lot of your tax slips, and you can actually go online and download all those all the numbers get pre-filled in. You don’t have to type them in, and so doing your taxes are a lot easier than it used to be.”

Savings go to clients, not big tax filing firms

A major benefit of going to a tax clinic run by volunteers means that clients don’t have to pay large sums to have their taxes done, or lose big percentages of their returns, Huntingford said.

“When you’re particularly on low income, then the fees you’d have to pay to a tax filing agency make a difference to your monthly budget. If you can come to Momentum, or any of the dozens of other agencies in Calgary… then you can get your taxes filed without having to pay out for that professional service.”

He said those savings from fees could be re-invested into a savings account, providing long-term benefits to clients.

Jeff Loomis, executive director for Momentum said that was one of the goals that the organization had in mind.

“Once they can get the really critical income boosting benefits, then they can also look at how they can start building their savings. Then we can work with them in some of our savings programs,” Loomis said.

Among those programs is one that allowed clients to put aside a portion of their tax return into a savings account for a year, and in return receive a 50 per cent matching amount, he said.

“Because of the tax filing being really critical time cash infusion, people can use some of the tax return to pay for their immediate costs but there may be the opportunity for people to put some of that tax return money away into a savings program,” Loomis said.

Loomis said that filing taxes can also be a critical piece of obtaining supports outside of returns, as programs like Calgary’s Fair Entry also require information from tax returns.

Overall, he said, for some very low income Calgarians the tax return provided by the Canadian government can make up to 50 per cent of all of the income that individual makes in a year.

Momentum doing in-house clinics as a way of meeting rising demand in Calgary

Momentum had, prior to this year, been a long time supporter of the Aspire financial empowerment collaborative, but said Loomis the growing need for low-income tax programs meant the time was right to start their own program in-house.

The focus for this April was to support Momentum clients who were already taking advantage of financial literacy and empowerment training through the non-profit.

“It’s not only about filing taxes, it’s really about accessing benefits and tax filings. One of the ways to do that, now starting this year, is we’re offering support all year round for people to access those benefits,” he said.

One of those individuals receiving the benefits from the Momentum program this year was Tyler Lindsey, who was invited to take advantage of the volunteer tax filing clinic as a result of his participation in a financial workshop at Momentum.

“I came in to get that done, and then also they got me a benefits clinic at the same time. So, when I came in, they were able to get my taxes done in about 10 to 15 minutes and they got me quite a lot of money back—a few thousand dollars—which is really coming at a good time with how expensive everything is,” Lindsey said.

“It’s really going to keep me going for a couple months. It’s really taken the pressure right off of me.”

Lindsey, who also runs a business, said that the cost to have a bookkeeper do his personal and corporate income taxes was very expensive, but that thanks to the volunteer personal tax clinic, he was able to use some of that return to pay for the corporate return to be done.

“It’s a massive benefit. I saved a lot of money, and I didn’t really have the money to have it done otherwise. So, I would have had to figure it out myself. But I like having the certainty of having somebody who knows what they’re doing,” he said.

“So many of the things that they asked me I didn’t know that I could write off, and so I was able to get back probably quite a lot more than than I would have on my own because I just wouldn’t have known that there really these options. It’s massively important for my peace of mind, because I know that I got what I’m owed.”

Loomis said that one of the goals for the tax clinic for next year would be to help out individuals who have more complex tax returns, like individuals working in the gig economy, but are still low income.

For more information on Momentum, see momentum.org.