Harper government taxing childcare benefits

The Harper government is taxing your childcare benefits.

I sent the following letter as an op/ed to all of my local papers. So far I have not encountered one single person who was aware that their benefits are being clawed back. Feel free to copy and send to your local papers.

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I wonder how many people are aware that their childcare benefit payments count as income and are being taxed back by the Harper government.

Recently my wife and I, along with all other parents with a child under six years old, received a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency which included a universal child care benefit statement (RC62). Our new government is now taxing back a large portion of that benefit. Instead of $1200 per year per child under six, you will only get to keep $460 of this if your combined family income is between $30,000 & $40,000 per year. The rest is taxed back.

So not only was the $100 per month too little to pay for early childhood development services (and not nearly enough for one parent to stay at home) now it may even put my family income over a certain tax bracket, and it could cause me to lose a significant portion of my tax return.

Tricky.

REFERENCES
The following links spell out the situation very well.
http://www.childcareadvocacy.ca (Harper Plan PDF)
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Harper Plan tax info
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