I had been working with TaxWise for about a year and a half at time when I had mentioned to my Father that he would likely qualify for Disability Tax Refunds, if he had my colleagues at TaxWise go through the process for him. My Father, very capable when it comes to doing income tax preparations for himself and his friends, and very capable as well when it comes to accessing information on the internet, said to me “I went through the form online, and I wouldn’t qualify”.
My Dad has COPD, which causes difficulty in breathing, especially when exerting himself through an activity like lifting or walking. He was right, when you go through the form online, there is nothing on it that mentions his condition, not even anything that mentions even an inking that addresses breathing problems. My Dad is a pretty informed guy and I told him that I think he would, but he was pretty firm on how he felt about it, so I wasn’t going to push.
Beginning a process to qualify for Disability Tax Refunds is a decision that a person needs to make for themselves. While the process is very simple and is pretty much risk free, a person’s personal finances is just that: personal. As well, as a marketing person who had been working with this company for not very long, I felt as though my job is to inform people of what we do, and in many cases, inform people that they have a problem they didn’t know they had – like they’ve been overpaying on their taxes for years when instead should have been getting refunds for each of those years. However, I try to be really respectful of people’s choices and privacy, so when I’m not heard, even after I’ve persisted, my usual reaction is that I have others that require my help, so I should let that person absorb the information I have left with them with and move on. After all, it’s not me who has been overpaying more than $1000 in taxes every year. I can only offer advice.
A month or so later, a friend of my Mother’s had called to tell her how I had helped, how TaxWise went through the process to get her qualified for disability tax refunds for the approaching tax years and (more immediately impactful), we were able to go back into previous tax years and apply those new disability tax refunds.
When my Dad heard about this, he called me up: “Just to get this straight, if I don’t qualify, it won’t cost me anything?”, “that’s right” I told him. “And I’m only charged a percentage of the amount you get back for me, right?”, “That’s right”, I said, “they charge you a percentage of the amount that they retrieve for you going backwards only. Whether it’s a monetary amount they get back for you, or credits, you are only charged for the amount what TaxWise gets for you”.
“What about for those credits the years moving forward, is TaxWise going to charge me for that?” He asked. “The tax years ahead are your business. You own those credits that you can apply to your taxes to years moving forward. But you may want to consider having TaxWise do your income taxes as when it comes to doing taxes for people with disabilities, they do it better than anyone else, as that’s really what they’ve built their business on, and they’ve been doing that for more than 25 years. For those years moving forward, if you did choose to have TaxWise prepare your future income tax returns, they charge a nominal flat rate fee”.
My Dad agreed. Within three months, he qualified and we were able to apply those new credits to previous years income taxes, which landed him a nice fat check in the mail from the Canada Revenue Agency. Even better than that though, he has been able to apply those credits to the income tax years moving forward, and over a 10 year period, he has been able to collect more than $15,000.00. My Mother also has since qualified because of her arthritis, and she received a retroactive refund as well, and she is able to apply those credits to her taxes as well. Along with the obvious benefits, they also enjoy automatically qualifying for programs like the recent one-time government payment that provides up to $600 in recognition of the extraordinary expenses incurred by persons with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I love what I do. I love helping people, often the ones who need it most. Helping friends and family has certainly served me beyond my paycheck, but more than that, I get an intense satisfaction from the thought that I may have improved a person’s situation by introducing to them to another path, a new perspective. And from that, I connect them with experienced experts who are intimately familiar with the policies and processes which create for the recipient their most likely opportunity for a favourable outcome.
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