Canadian moms
Question about tax return and child tax benefit!
My Fiancé and I got back together and we share a daughter, we never filed together until today, and tax benefit said I was primary caregiver and I have full custody since she was born since we weren’t together and broke up while I was pregnant (3 years ago).
Now my question is, my marital status has now changed to common law, do I need to change my child benefit ? Or does that remain full custody and we all live together and mothers are technically the “primary caregiver”
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Yes, you must notify them. I filed incorrectly and had to pay back a tonne of money later on. You will get less money but better than a hefty bill next tax season. You can always call the CRA and ask specifics so you know how to file but they’ll likely advise for you to change it. Mothers are still the primary caregiver even in a marriage but it changes the amount of your benefits and that is what they will look at.
Yes, so my marital status was automatically changed on my CRA account when we filed today with h&r block because we filed together for the first time.
So I don’t need to change anything with my child tax ? It’s just automatically recalculated with the marital status change ?
Notify them ASAP! Especially if you have already just filed taxes together as common law. When did you get back together? Hoping for your sake it hasn’t been very long because they will want to know when you started living together again and from that point on they will re calculate your benefit factoring in your fiancés income as well and it will be less money per month than you get single. So any amount of time they paid you as single, but you guys were actually living together, they will say you owe back some money. And you can’t really be dishonest because they will ask for proof of address etc
Then this is the email I received from CRA after we filed our taxes as common law
You really need to call them to be sure. I wouldn’t trust that it is automatically factored in.
It says it will recalculate going forward from today on. I would just be careful that they don’t look into how long you have been living with him. That stuff matters.
I would probably call them to be sure. I went thru a similar situation, we filed together after we were technically common law for nearly a year (I know, long story but my fiance was behind on his taxes so silly us held off on changing my marital status right away which was such a mistake) so anyways when we filed together, I checked shortly after and saw the same thing-that my marital status had changed to common law so I assumed they’d just automatically do what they needed to recalculate everything and was low key hoping they’d just change it as of the date we filed because they hadn’t asked when we became common law. So I waited and all seemed fine. Gave us our tax returns, months went by and then all the sudden we get a letter in the mail asking for the exact date we became common law because now they were reviewing everything. Gave them the date and sure enough owed a lot of money back which they’ve been taking every month so I’m only getting like 40% of the benefit til it’s paid
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