Tips related to charitable donations
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Hide expandable textCharitable donations may be claimed by the donor or by his or her spouse. If neither can use them, the program will carry these forward for use in a future year. Charitable donations may be carried forward up to 5 years.
It is better to combine charitable donations than for each family member to claim them separately. Federally, charitable donations of $200 and less are eligible for a tax credit of 15%, and donations in excess of $200 are eligible for a tax credit of 29%. Therefore, having one taxpayer claim the combined donations can help breach the $200 threshold and make them eligible for the higher credit.
The religious education part of your child's tuition may entitle you to a charitable donation tax credit. Check with the school.
If you are a modest donor, consider giving to charities in larger amounts every second or third year rather than small amounts each year. This provides greater tax benefits as total donations over $200 yield a greater tax credit than total donations of $200 or less.
You do not have to claim the donations made in on your tax return. It may be more beneficial for you to carry them forward and claim them on the return of any of the five following years. Regardless of how you do it, you can only claim each donation once. Do not enter amounts you do not wish to use in the current year.
The program will determine how much of your charitable donations to use on your return, and will then carry any balance forward into next year.
The program will determine which spouse can better benefit from the family's charitable donations and will then claim them on that person's return.
(Quebec taxpayers please skip to the tip after this one.)
Program's optimization uses just enough of your available donations to reduce your federal tax to 0. Unused donations are carried forward to use next year. In some cases you may want to force the program to claim more of your available donations in order to reduce your provincial tax to 0 as well.
Quebec
Quebec taxpayers can claim different federal and Quebec donation amounts, and the program will optimize these amounts independantly. Any unused donation amounts that are carried forward can be different federally and for Quebec.