Are You Ready for Payroll Year End?

It’s that time already – not only is Christmas around the corner but so are T4’s and T4A’s! Because of the leap year in 2020, T4’s are due February 29th, however since that is on a weekend, CRA requires that all tax forms and summaries be submitted by March 2, 2020.

At Star Company, we offer a full range of solutions from integrated payroll, expense reimbursement to time tracking and vacation/attendance tracking. (ed note: ask Carleen to show you Vacation Tracker – very cool!)

Preparing T4’s can be an enormous burden – our goal is to make it painless, seamless and seemingly effortless. But do you wanna know what the heck we are doing when we prepare your T4’s? Well, here you go:

Preparation for year-end begins long before the last day of February. By mid-November, we reconcile source deductions remitted to CRA payroll accounts to what has been recorded on payroll to ensure all data has been recorded properly. If there are any discrepancies, they are analyzed and resolved before the deadline of January 15, 2020, to avoid late penalties from CRA. In this process, any possible errors involving overpayments of CPP and EI deductions by employees is corrected before the end of the year to avoid the hassle of completing additional paperwork to request a refund from CRA after December 31st. Also, since all payments to employees are processed through payroll, there is no need to worry about any source deductions that have not been remitted to CRA or have not been recorded on the employee’s record. When manual payments are issued by our clients, we ensure they are updated accordingly in payroll.

We verify that all personal data has been received for employees at the time they are hired on payroll, eliminating the need to follow up for vital missing information, like an incomplete mailing address or SIN. Since we offer distribution of tax slips online, a former employee does not need to worry about their T4 getting lost in the mail. They will get an email notification that their tax slip is ready and they can retrieve it from the employee self-service portal from our payroll platforms.

Since we have access to our client’s CRA account, we are able to submit T4, T4A slips and their summaries directly to CRA online, eliminating the hassle and stress of submitting paper forms. Amendments can also be submitted in the same manner. And the dreaded PIER (Pensionable and Insurable Earnings Report) can be resolved through CRA’s online portal as a result of updates to the functionality of their website. We handle all these issues for you.

As a business owner, here are some things to consider for the upcoming year:

• Are you budgeting for any salary increases this year? If so, please ensure you notify us of the increases as they become effective. We have a very simple and straightforward form to capture this!
• Keep in mind what the minimum wage is: there are plans in Ontario to increase this from $14/hour later in 2020
• Will employees be entitled to more vacation? Ontario has recently changed their Employment Standards so that employees with less than 5 years of service should receive at least two weeks of vacation, but those over 5 years are entitled to three weeks
• Are you required to make Employer Health Tax premium remittances? If your total annual salaries in Ontario are in excess of $490,000, an EHT account will need to be opened with the Ministry of Finance. If your business is based in British Columbia, annual salaries in excess of $500,000 will require an account. We can assist with setting this up and keeping your business compliant for reporting and payment purposes
• CRA has provided CPP and EI rates for 2020 which could also affect budgeting for source deduction expenses:

Year-end does not have to be a scary time for any business. Let us help you be prepared!