Yesterday I received a call from a potential new client, and I thought the topic was quite fitting for the season we’re about to go into - tax season.

This potential client and his partner had a new baby last year. They both just have jobs, so there's not a whole lot going on there taxwise. Just standard things like T-slips and some RRSP contributions. 

They were shocked to find that my advice to them was that they could do their tax return themselves. For a tax return that's very simple like in this case, you really shouldn’t need or have to pay an accountant to do that for you.

I could have taken them on and made a fee, but they didn't have any funky stuff going on and I don’t feel that extra cost is necessary. There weren't a whole lot of extra credits to claim or employment expenses. My suggestion to them was to go and try to find a program that they can use, likely TurboTax or something similar. You’d have to pay ten times that to get someone else to do your tax return, and that just doesn't make any sense. I'm not in this business to steal people's money. I'm in the business of helping those who actually need it. 

When you have a new child, all of your credits are going to be automatically calculated. For kids, you have to register and fill out a bunch of paperwork for the government at the time of birth. When you fill out your tax return, you make sure that you list this dependent on your tax return, and then the government is going to automatically calculate and send the amount of child tax benefit that you are entitled to.

If your tax return is easy and you're not claiming very many deductions, you should try to do it yourself. You're going to save yourself a ton of money.