Each year I do the income taxes for my brother and father. The hardest part of this is getting the information from them. Their filing systems leave a little to be desired. My father has a large envelope in which he very neatly places random pieces of paper. A T4 from 1978, an expired coupon to Ponderosa restaurant, duct cleaning flyers and Ziggy cartoons that he has clipped from the newspaper. Almost everything can be found in those envelopes with the exception of current year tax statements. My brother is not quite as meticulous. He will crumple various pieces of paper into little balls and then stash them in every nook and cranny he can find.
This year my dad and I weren't able to connect for him to pass me his envelope of miscellany so I had to get the numbers from him over the phone. He could have sent an e-mail but he types by the hunt and peck method and I'm not sure if he knows how to use backspace so errors are not corrected, or acknowledged, so that wouldn't have been reliable. As it was, I had to pry the proper form names out of him.
"I've go a T4D here."
"Dad, I don't think there's such a thing."
"Sorry, T47G."
"Try again."
"Right, right - it's a T4164."
"Dad, you have a Manitoba Odour-Control Tax Credit?"
"I am using that new soap."
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