Retroactive RWA, is it possible?

[alexis]

Hi everyone,

First off, congrats on a great site! I'm writing because I have a question about RWA. I found this link: inhttp://www.replant.ca/board/viewtopic.p ... hlight=rwa very informative, and I finally understand RWA. Thanks Scooter. I was wondering though if it was possible to get a company to retroactively change your T4 so that you could get part of your wage classified as RWA. The reason I'm asking is that way back in 2000, I planted ~60 days with Summit Reforestation, and at the time didn't know anything about RWA. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Summit did either because I didn't receive any such allowance. As a result, my earnings for the year 2000 are grossly inflated when compared to future years with companies that did use the RWA.

The Quebec government is hounding me for all these taxes that I supposedly owe. However, if Summit had used the RWA in 2000, I'd be actually getting some money back. I looked into this myself and found that you could retroactively re-issue a t4 slip, and so theoretically it would seem that the Summit accountants could help me out. I called the company a few times, and the accountant always told me that he'd look into it, but I havn't heard anything from them since (it's been a few months).

Am I pursuing a hopeless cause?

Thanks for any insights.

Alexis

[Scooter]

Yes, it is possible to retroactively change a T4. However, the accounting behind it would be a nightmare. Most companies would just say, "No, we will not change it. That's how we did it back then. We sympathize with you, but if we made this change now, we could open ourselves up to having to do it for literally hundreds and hundreds of employees, and the expense would be prohibitive."

A bigger problem for you is that I believe that you can only file amended returns for three years back. Therefore, I think you'd be out of luck. I'll have to look into that to double-check the time frame. It seems like a similar concept to tax-loss carry-forward/back (7 and 3) but it's actually an entirely different scenario.

I ran into a problem in 1995 when I was audited on my "employment expenses" claim. I had submitted a claim for several thousand dollars of employment expenses with my return. I got audited, and they requested to see my receipts. I couldn't find them, and was very puzzled for weeks. I thought that maybe I had left them in New Brunswick at first, but then I eventually decided that I must have made the whole thing up, because the receipts weren't where I kept all other tax-related stuff. Finally, I said that I couldn't provide the receipts, and of course I got nailed for taxes on the lot and it cost me around $1400 in higher income taxes. Four years later, while cleaning out a desk at home, I found the long-lost receipts. I called Revenue Canada (now CCRA) and they said that I had found them too late, but that if I had found them a year earlier, I could contest it as new information.

I'm reasonably confident that this example would fall into the same treatment. Not 100% certain, so I'll try to look it up.

[alexis]

Thanks for the reply. I'm surprised that you could no longer change your past income returns. For the quebec ones, you can go at least go back 7 years (as I've had to do now), but I don't know about the feds. If I find out anything more, I'll post it here. Cheers,

Alexis