I don't think I'm smashing any headlines by saying that you need to be organized in order to do a proper personal tax return. 

It starts right at the beginning of the year. Obviously we're too late for 2021, but it's 2022 now. Keep in mind that your tax return has things in it that relay all of the information of what happened to you this year. If you're making donations, you take those donation receipts and put them in your folder, whether it be physical or digital.

You shouldn't be doing your personal tax return until you have all of your information. It happens every year - we have people that are really quick to get their information into us, so we complete and file the tax return. A month later they say that they forgot a medical receipt, donation receipt, etcetera. At that point in time, it might not be financially feasible to do an adjustment for those things.

(It’s worth noting that donations can be carried forward up to four years so you wouldn’t be losing out on that.)

It's just really important for you to keep track of your tax information, and also of those emails with your accountant in the prior year letting you know or asking you for information.

Every accountant should be taking the information that you give them, the information that's available to them on the CRA's website, and the information that you had in your tax return in the prior year and comparing all of that to make sure that everything is there and that nothing is missing. Every day we are calling people for information because we found something on their prior year's tax return that they did not provide us with this year. They always say, "Oh, shoot, I forgot about that." 

That's okay, that means we're doing our job and that means that people appreciate what we do for them. However, it would certainly be easier for you if you had a single location where you store all of this information, so that when the time comes you know where all of it is and it’s easily shareable with your tax preparer.