Question about taxes and claiming the costs of surgery

Hi all,

I am wondering what one needs to do when claiming the surgery in your tax return.

Soonsunny

I asked my accountant and he said that as long as your doctor said it was required then all expenses, re travel, meals, your cost for surgery is all tax deductible, although rev cananda can still ask for docs to make ure this was required for your health...but my accountant said its not a problem

Ask your clinic for a receipt for the operation.

Just claim the surgery under medical expenses and make sure you have a copy of your receipt ready to show CRA. If you are a married claim all medical expenses under the spouse that gets the bigger bang for the buck.
One person in a family can claim all medical expenses despite the person the expense is for (eg. spouse, children, other dependents).

Hope this helps.

Thanks all who replied. I appreciate it. I was cruising around the CRA website giving myself a headache trying to find the right area. This really clarifies things for me.

Soonsunny

look under medical expenses. But for an oldster who is not wise in the way of the internet, I telephoned them. Took me a long time pushing buttons and hold please but eventually I got thru to someone who knew something about medical expenses. I love a live voice over eletronic surfing when it comes to money. Doddie

so on average what type of rebate are we looking at?

It's not actually a rebate, its a tax deduction. So if you had no earned income, then it would not do any good. But if you had a job and paid taxes, it will reduce your tax payable, resulting in a nice tax refund.

yes i worked so how nice a tax refund are we talkin

Well I'm not too savvy in the whole tax area but I worked and claimed my surgery and got $5000.00 back. I believe my acct said about $2500 was from my surgery. But I didn't claim travel or food or anything, just the cost of the surgery. Hope this helps :)

It depends on your income and your other deductions and how much tax you paid. You won't know until you do your entire tax return next year (assuming your surgery was in 2008).

I too calculated my return for the surgery expenses at ~$5 000.00. I kept all receipts (cabs etc) and submitted them.

thats how I understand it, too.

Another point I'd like to add: some people will not bother to make a claim if the don't have receipts. I recommend that you claim reasonable amounts for expenses that you do not have receipts for.

Why?

1 - not every tax return gets audited for receipts

2 - if you are audited, you may get re-assessed to a lower number, but the auditor will not be able to assess you down to nothing. in other words, claim the $300 in missing fuel receipts and don't get upset if it gets reassessed to $150. Even $150 is better than not claiming it.

I used to smoke cigarettes with the experts at H&R Block national office in Calgary. This was their advice to me when I mentioned that I didn't keep any of my moving expense receipts.