Yesterday I posted a blog about cryptocurrency and I voiced a couple of my concerns with industry standards. Today, I’d like to discuss another pet peeve of mine, which is investment income statements, more specifically T3's. These are the ones that are due at the end of March. If you haven't got yours yet, it is coming or it should be coming.

What's frustrating about the T3's themselves is that the names on the slip that you receive in the mail are not always the names that are submitted to the government. The lack of consistency between the financial institutions and all of the funds is frustrating. Most of the other income slips are standardized, but for some reason, T3’s are not. They're different formats.

The same goes for RRSP slips, too. Different formats means a different way that they present data. Some make it obvious, some make it not obvious, which is not the point and it doesn't do the taxpayer any service when they're trying to prepare their own tax returns. If you are one of those people that prepare their own tax returns, please watch out for those T3 slips, because it might say the institution's name, or it might say the funds name.

If you have a slip that says the funds name, and you also have a slip on the CRA’s website that says the institution's name, you might be double entering that income, which means that you are taxing yourself twice and that is a very bad thing to happen obviously. Pay attention to what's going on. You might find yourself with a couple of slips that add up to another summarized slip that you've received. And although they look different, they are still the same.

So watch out for those note sections in the bottom of the T3 to make sure that your financial institution is listing the funds that it is including on that T3 slip. Go slow, get it right, you don’t want to overpay!

Bryan Petersen is an accountant and entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience mentoring small and medium businesses across Alberta. Learn more about working with Bryan and the dedicated team at Alberta Wide Virtual Accounting.