What do I like about the new budget?
Canada's federal government released its budget for the next year yesterday.
While if you have a young family or certain types of businesses and investments there's plenty of things to be excited about, I don't fall into those categories.
Instead, there are two things that affect me personally.
First, there's an increase to the 48 hour exemption on how much you can bring back into the country. The $200 credit is increasing to $400. Now you can legally and bring back buy more expensive toys in the US, given you stick around for two days.
And then there's the boost to the public transit pass tax credit: you will be able to claim a credit for weekly transit passes. The catch is that for this to work, you must have at least four consecutive weeks of passes. And if you live outside Toronto and have fancy "electronic " transit passes, they're going to be included in some way too.
The 4 week requirement is probably designed to discourage people from making tons of micro-claims (the government seems to discourage those), which is a shame - even casual transit use should be encouraged - still, it's another small step forward, and a boon to people who may travel for a straight month, but don't follow the calendar religiously. I can picture this being especially cool for auditors working downtown or at clients within TTC range. No longer will it be necessary to "gamble" that you're going to have a full month worth of work at a client, only to find yourself diverted to a completely other part of the city - or country for that matter!
An interesting thought occured: you could, in theory, find yourself claiming 4 weeks of transit passes from 4 different cities that offer weekly passes. That is, if you find yourself travelling that much on your job. Interesting twist nevertheless.
Of course, I haven't read the actual fine print, but rather a summary, so perhaps my theory is completely wrong - if you're going to try this when you're filing your taxes next year, read the actual rules.
There are of course many other 'heavier' changes, but most of them don't affect me directly - yes, the credits for children and other things are nice, but I don't have any. And I doubt most of my readership cares much about the depreciation rate of their oil sands drilling equipment. If you do, though, then I'm humbled to the appropriate degree to know that I have oil tycoons among my readers.