Tax season facts and figures

Tax season is a festive time for those who are nuts about numbers.

In their honour and for their enjoyment, CBC News has compiled some tax trivia, courtesy of Statistics Canada except where noted, including taxes paid by the rich (and the rest of us) for the tax year 2010, the latest year for which there is a range of data.

25.5 million: number of people filing Canadian tax returns.

$118.6 billion: total personal and non-resident income tax collected (federal, provincial and territorial), in the 12 months to March 31, 2011, according to the federal Department of Finance. Up 8.6 per cent from $109.2 billion in 2009.

(CBC)

$14,500: average income tax paid by families of two or more people. Up from $14,200 in 2009.

$8,200: median (meaning half of the people pay more and half pay less than this) income tax paid by families of two or more people. Unchanged from 2009

15.9%: implied tax rate on families with two or more members. Up from 15.7% in 2009.

$8.3 billion: total value of charitable donations claimed.

$1,437: average total of charitable donations claimed per tax filer.

254,700: number of individuals who made up the wealthiest 1% of tax filers.

21%: percentage of women among the wealthiest 1%. Up from 11% in 1982.

10.6%: how much of Canada's total income the wealthiest 1% of tax filers ( i.e. those who paid the most tax in) accounted for. Down from its 2006 peak of 12.1% and up from 7.0% in the early 1980s.

21.2%: proportion of total income taxes collected paid by the richest 1%. Down from a 2007 peak of 23.3%.

$201,400: minimum annual income to be considered in the wealthiest 1%.

$283,400: the median income of the richest 1%.

$28,400: the median income of the remaining 99%.

$90,100: the median income tax paid by the richest 1%.

$1,800: the median income tax paid by the remaining 99%.

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10 celebrities who tried to dodge the taxman

Most Canadians resign themselves to the certainty of death and taxes, but there are those around the world who take exception to giving the taxman his share of their earnings and sometimes end up on the wrong side of the law. Here's a list of 10 high-profile cases.

1. Walter Anderson — A telecommunications entrepreneur, Anderson was convicted in 2005 of the largest tax evasion scheme in U.S. history for using a string of offshore companies to hide income on which he owed more than $200 million US in taxes.

2. Gérard Depardieu — The French actor moved to a Belgian village and became a Russian citizen all in order to avoid the French government's attempts to impose a 75 per cent tax on those earning more than one million euros (about $1.4 million). Russian President Vladimir Putin personally presented him with a Russian passport in January in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Depardieu insists he is no tax evader — he has paid 145 million euros (about $185 million) in taxes during his lifetime. The wealth tax was ultimately rejected by France's Constitutional Court but could potentially be resurrected in a different form.

Italy's former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was convicted last year of tax fraud of almost $13 million. (Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty)

3. Paul Hogan — The Crocodile Dundee actor always denied engaging in tax evasion but ended up reaching a settlement last year with the Australian Taxation Office, which accused him and colleague John Cornell of using offshore tax havens to avoid paying nearly $153 million, even temporarily banning him from leaving the country.

4. Wesley Snipes — The U.S. star of the Blade film trilogy was sentenced to three years in federal prison for failing to file income tax returns dating back to 1998 and owing $17 million. He's due to be released this summer.

5. Willie Nelson — The singer received a bill for $16.7 million in back taxes in 1990. He responded by releasing the album, The IRS Tapes: Who Will Buy My Memories? His fans answered the question by buying up at auction the personal assets the government had seized and promptly giving them back to the country singer. Nelson was back in the black by 1993.

6. Silvio Berlusconi — The former Italian premier was convicted last year of tax fraud of almost $13 million and sentenced to four years in prison after inflating the price his media empire paid for TV rights to U.S. movies and pocketing the difference.

New York hotel mogul Leona Helmsley, shown in 2003, is best remembered for her statement that 'only the little people pay taxes.' (Keith Bedford/Getty)

7. Leona Helmsley — The late New York hotel mogul, nicknamed the "Queen of Mean," is best remembered for her statement that "only the little people pay taxes." She was accused of evading tax to the tune of several million dollars and sentenced in 1989 to 16 years in prison — but served only 19 months, plus an additional two years under house arrest.

8. Nicolas Cage — The U.S. Internal Revenue Service filed a tax lien against the actor in July 2009 for $6.2 million. He had been earlier accused of under-reporting income and inappropriately claiming such items as his personal jet.

9. Tolis Voskopoulos — This once-popular Greek singer was found to have evaded $7.5 million in taxes but the issue of how much money he will pay in penalties is still before the Greek courts. His wife, Angela Gerekou, has already paid her penalty, losing her job as the country's deputy culture minister when the charges were first announced three years ago.

10. Al Capone — This infamous gangster was brought down not because of convictions for his more serious crimes, such as leading an organized crime syndicate in Chicago in the 1920s, but for evading taxes amounting to $215,080.48 US — about $2.8 million today. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison and served about seven and a half years of his sentence and paid all of the outstanding taxes and fines before being released on parole in 1939.

With files from The Associated Press

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Employees rate their employers, CEOs on Glassdoor

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has an 84 per cent approval rating so far this year on Glassdoor. Last year, former co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Laziridis got a rating of just 36 per cent. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)What's it like to work at struggling smartphone maker BlackBerry, one of Canada's big banks or scandal-ridden engineering firm SNC-Lavalin?

So far in this year, BlackBerry staff have given their CEO Thorsten Heins an 84 per cent approval rating and the company's rating stands at 3.6 out of five on the website Glassdoor, a job and career site where employees anonymously dish on the pros and cons of their companies and bosses.

"It's peeling back all of the layers on a lot of things in the workplace that used to be taboo, and it's all according to the employees," said Glassdoor spokesman Scott Dobroski.

Employees can disclose salaries, how a company conducts job interviews, the company's recreation activities, workplace photos and in some cases even talk about what the bathroom is like, Dobroski said from Sausalito, Calif.

Facebook's Zuckerberg top-rated CEO

Glassdoor recently came out with the 50 highest rated CEOs for 2013, based on employee reviews, and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg came out on top.

Zuckerberg scored a 99 per cent approval rating from Facebook employees, up 14 percentage points from 2012 despite turbulence surrounding the social media site when it became publicly traded, Dobroski said.

No Canadian CEO made the top 50 list, but the California company has expanded content for its north of the border audience with about 8,000 Canadian companies, government agencies and universities and colleges reviewed by employees.

CEO Steve Williams of Suncor (TSX:SU) scored the highest of any Canadian chief executive with a 96 per cent approval rating from the Calgary company's employees. Suncor got a 3.5 rating out of five.

Glassdoor verifies email addresses and screens content for accuracy, Dobroski said. Workplace and CEO comments can't only be negative, he added.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg scored a 99 per cent approval rating from his employees on Glassdoor, up 14 points from last year. (Robert Galbraith/Reuters)"About 15 to 20 per cent of the content that is submitted to Glassdoor is actually rejected because it either doesn't meet our community guidelines or it appears suspicious."

McGill University associate professor Lisa Cohen said job review websites provide useful information to prospective employees, especially when it comes to salaries and corporate culture.

The information is also potentially valuable for a company's human resources staff, she said.

'Nothing is a secret'

"This is a read on how well you're doing," said Cohen, who teaches organizational behaviour at McGill's Desautels Faculty of Management.

"I think another thing this website shows us is that nothing is a secret," she said.

Cohen noted the web is full of sites that rate everyone from teachers to doctors to dentists.

An employee at Waterloo, Ont., based BlackBerry (TSX:BB) recently said the upside of working there was: "Cutting edge technology, rapid learning environment, smart people.

1. But another employee said the downside was: BlackBerry is "going down, going down, going down, going down..... cellphone market is so cruel to every competitor, be aware of your choice."

BlackBerry launched its new Z10 touchscreen smartphone this year, but has been struggling to hold on to market share.

Former co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis had an overall approval rating of 36 per cent in 2011 and the company had a 3.1 rating, according to employees.

CEO Gerry McCaughey of CIBC (TSX:CM) scored just a 54 per cent approval rating from the big bank's employees, but CIBC got a three out of five rating.

Meanwhile, an employee at SNC-Lavalin said it's a "great company, revitalized with new management that is desperately trying to pitch itself."

Former SNC-Lavalin CEO Pierre Duhaime was relieved of his duties in March 2012 and is facing fraud charges stemming from a contract involving the building of the multibillion-dollar McGill University Health Centre in Montreal.

But employee advice to senior management was: "Overreaction to the corruption scandal has turned to over-correction."

Dobroski said the average CEO approval rating in Canada is 70 per cent, compared with 69 per cent in the United Kingdom and 66 per cent in the United States.

Dobroski said the Canadian companies with the most content on Glassdoor were Ontario Power Generation, City of Toronto and the University of Toronto.

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BlackBerry CEO says new phones needed to stay relevant

BlackBerry chief executive Thorsten Heins plans to unveil a broader array of new smartphones this year, catering to markets around the world, as the company works to recoup a stronger position with devices for more than just business users.

As competitors like Apple and Samsung prepare their next round of attacks in the highly competitive industry, with new models expected later this year, Heins is aware that BlackBerry will need to respond with more than just the pair of new phones it has announced so far.

"In order to stay relevant, we have to build a portfolio," he said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"We will bring it out at the moment when we can expect the biggest market attention for these products."

Heins is thinking big these days, but he's also well aware of the stumbles that BlackBerry has faced in the past. Its former leaders famously let the smartphone's success go to their heads and innovation fall by the wayside as competitors surged ahead.

As he talks about the future, Heins sits among the smartphones that built the BlackBerry name. The company is preparing to open the BlackBerry Experience Centre at its Waterloo, Ont., headquarters where it will celebrate the company's roots while showcasing the new line of products.

On the walls of the museum of sorts, which officially opens to the public in April, a timeline reminds visitors of the "history" of the BlackBerry and the devices that helped build the company to its once-dominant position. While Heins poses for photos, he's careful not to stand beneath the "History" sign on the wall, a public relations nightmare for a company trying to prove it's still a serious competitor in the smartphone race.

Reviving BlackBerry

Certainly, BlackBerry isn't out of weeds yet, but Heins has helped the company come a long way since he took the top position in January 2012 and navigated through the make-or-break product launch of BlackBerry 10.

In March, the BlackBerry Z10 touchscreen smartphone arrived in U.S. stores, often considered its most crucial market. But Heins isn't sitting on the sidelines tallying sales.

'In order to stay relevant, we have to build a portfolio.'—BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins

Instead, he's moving ahead with a BlackBerry product line that will have three tiers: smartphones for high end users, as well as variations that sell at mid- and "entry-level" prices.

The lower-priced models will also use the BlackBerry 10 operating system, but will be designed with markets like India and Indonesia in mind. It's an intricate shift that involves gradually encouraging its loyal users in emerging markets to make the switch to its new operating system, while recognizing it's not going to happen overnight — and in some cases perhaps not for years.

In the meantime, the company will release another round of BlackBerry 7 models in some countries, which continue to use the old operating system.

Heins doesn't want to miss out on potential sales by ignoring one of its most loyal segments in countries where buying a low-priced smartphone is sometimes the only reasonable option for consumers.

"We want to give them a good BlackBerry experience. So this is where probably another BlackBerry 7 product in that range makes a lot of sense," he said.

"We're not excluding those markets from BlackBerry 10 because of us wanting to sell BlackBerry 7. You will see both in coexistence for awhile in those markets."

Creating a lower-priced smartphone is the next frontier for competitors like Apple and Samsung, who have a stronghold in North America and Europe. BlackBerry, already has a formidable position in emerging phone markets like Nigeria, where it is ranked as the No. 1 smartphone.

Rollout of mid-tier, entry-level models

The rollout of the new wave of smartphones will begin sometime between September and November with a "mid-tier" priced model of both the touchscreen and keypad, or QWERTY, phones. Details and dates haven't been announced.

"Then we are working on something exciting for the holiday season," Heins said.

"We will be continuing to develop a portfolio also that covers the entry-level segment."

It's a plan Heins is approaching with plenty of caution, as the wounds BlackBerry is trying to heal are still fresh.

Several years ago, the company flooded the market with variations of its smartphone, ranging from a combination keypad and touchscreen version to a flip-phone model. Some observers said it overcomplicated the product line, confused consumers and left too many BlackBerrys on the market.

"I would tend to agree with it," Heins said.

"We want to stay really pure in the future portfolio…be really clear, and be unambiguous."

His vision of the ideal BlackBerry lineup would be a touchscreen and keypad version for each of its three product tiers, which would put six BlackBerry phones on the market at one time. But if one of the lower-priced phones fails to catch on with customers, it'll be scrapped.

"Each and every segment has to make money," he said. "There is no cross-subsidy from one segment to another, and if we don't make money, we don't do it."

Turning a profit at BlackBerry has been a priority for Heins, who began a massive cost-cutting initiative last year that involved laying off about 5,000 employees in a plan to save $1 billion. He achieved that goal about three months ahead of the company's own schedule.

On Thursday, BlackBerry managed to overcome recent quarterly losses and post a US$98-million profit that beat analyst expectations.

Within the results lurked some concerns though, including signs that more BlackBerry users jumped ship to other devices, as subscribers slipped to 76 million from 79 million.

Boosting revenues with services, features

As BlackBerry rolls out its new phones, the company is working behind the scenes to create additional services tied to its popular BlackBerry Messenger and other phone features that could boost revenues.

"The question is how quickly can we really come up with services that we can monetize, and what is this transition curve going to financially look like," Heins said.

"The intent of BlackBerry is not to stay in the service business, the intent is to grow our services business."

In its outlook, BlackBerry said it expects to "approach break-even" results in the first quarter of its current financial year based on lower costs, a more efficient supply chain and improved hardware margins.

Rumours have circulated for months that BlackBerry could sell its hardware business and gravitate towards being a provider of services, such as secure networks. Heins downplayed a separation of its hardware and services divisions.

"BlackBerry is an end-to-end solution," he said.

"Throwing one of these pots away would mean we break our business model in terms of security. Security still matters," he said.

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Bank of Cyprus big savers to lose up to 60%

Banks in Cyprus opened for normal business for the second day, but with strict restrictions on how much money their clients can access, after being shut for nearly two weeks. (Petros Karajias/Associated Press)

Large depositors at Cyprus' largest bank may be forced to accept losses of up to 60 per cent, far more than initially feared under the European rescue package to save the country from bankruptcy, officials said Saturday.

Deposits of more than 100,000 euros ($128,000) at the Bank of Cyprus would lose 37.5 per cent in money that would be converted into bank shares, according to a finance ministry decree obtained by The Associated Press. In a second raid on these accounts, depositors also could lose up to 22.5 per cent more, depending on what experts determine is needed to prop up the bank's reserves.

Banking and finance ministry officials confirmed these details in interviews with the AP. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to publicly discuss the issue.

The deposits that converted to bank shares would theoretically allow depositors to eventually recover their losses. But the shares now hold little value and it's uncertain when, if ever, the shares will regain a value equal to the depositors' losses.

Europe has demanded that large depositors in the country's two largest banks —Bank of Cyprus and Laiki Bank — accept across-the-board losses in order to pay for the 16 billion euro ($20.5 billion bailout). But officials had previously spoken of a loss to big depositors of 30 to 40 per cent.

Analysts said Saturday that imposing bigger losses on major depositors could further squeeze already crippled businesses as Cyprus tries to rebuild its banking sector in exchange for the international rescue package.

"Most of the damage will be done to businesses which had their money in the bank" to pay suppliers and employees, said University of Cyprus economics Professor Sofronis Clerides. "There's quite a difference lbetween a 30 per cent loss and a 60 per cent loss."

Russians expected to drain accounts

With businesses shrinking, the country could be dragged down into an even deeper recession, he said.

There's also concern that large depositors, including many wealthy Russians, would take their money and run once capital restrictions that Cypriot authorities have imposed on bank transactions to prevent such a possibility are lifted in about a month.

Cyprus agreed on Monday to make bank depositors with accounts over 100,000 euros to contribute to a financial rescue in order to secure 10 billion euros ($12.9 billion) in loans from the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund.

Cyprus needed to scrounge up 5.8 billion euros ($7.4 billion) on its own in order to clinch the larger package, and banks had remained shut for nearly two weeks until politicians hammered out a deal, opening again on Thursday.

But fearing that savers would rush to pull their money out in mass once banks reopened, Cypriot authorities imposed a raft of restrictions including daily withdrawal limits of 300 euros ($384) for individuals and 5,000 euros ($6,400) for businesses — the first so-called capital controls that any country has applied in the eurozone's 14-year history.

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BlackBerry CEO says new phones needed to stay relevant

BlackBerry chief executive Thorsten Heins plans to unveil a broader array of new smartphones this year, catering to markets around the world, as the company works to recoup a stronger position with devices for more than just business users.

As competitors like Apple and Samsung prepare their next round of attacks in the highly competitive industry, with new models expected later this year, Heins is aware that BlackBerry will need to respond with more than just the pair of new phones it has announced so far.

"In order to stay relevant, we have to build a portfolio," he said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"We will bring it out at the moment when we can expect the biggest market attention for these products."

Heins is thinking big these days, but he's also well aware of the stumbles that BlackBerry has faced in the past. It's former leaders famously let the smartphone's success go to their heads, and innovation fall by the wayside, as competitors surged ahead.

As he talks about the future, Heins sits among the smartphones that built the BlackBerry name. The company is preparing to open the BlackBerry Experience Centre at its Waterloo, Ont.-based headquarters where it will celebrate the company's roots while showcasing the new line of products.

On the walls of the museum of sorts, which officially opens to the public in April, a timeline reminds visitors of the "history" of the BlackBerry and the devices that helped build the company to its once-dominant position. While Heins poses for photos, he's careful not to stand beneath the "History" sign on the wall, a public relations nightmare for a company trying to prove it's still a serious competitor in the smartphone race.

Reviving BlackBerry

Certainly, BlackBerry isn't out of weeds yet, but Heins has helped the company come a long way since he took the top position in January 2012 and navigated through the make-or-break product launch of BlackBerry 10.

In March, the BlackBerry Z10 touchscreen smartphone arrived in U.S. stores, often considered its most crucial market. But Heins isn't sitting on the sidelines tallying sales.

'In order to stay relevant, we have to build a portfolio.'—BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins

Instead, he's moving ahead with a BlackBerry product line that will have three tiers: smartphones for high end users, as well as variations that sell at mid- and "entry-level" prices.

The lower-priced models will also use the BlackBerry 10 operating system, but will be designed with markets like India and Indonesia in mind. It's an intricate shift that involves gradually encouraging its loyal users in emerging markets to make the switch to its new operating system, while recognizing it's not going to happen overnight — and in some cases perhaps not for years.

In the meantime, the company will release another round of BlackBerry 7 models in some countries, which continue to use the old operating system.

Heins doesn't want to miss out on potential sales by ignoring one of its most loyal segments in countries where buying a low-priced smartphone is sometimes the only reasonable option for consumers.

"We want to give them a good BlackBerry experience. So this is where probably another BlackBerry 7 product in that range makes a lot of sense," he said.

"We're not excluding those markets from BlackBerry 10 because of us wanting to sell BlackBerry 7. You will see both in coexistence for awhile in those markets."

Creating a lower-priced smartphone is the next frontier for competitors like Apple and Samsung, who have a stronghold in North America and Europe. BlackBerry, already has a formidable position in emerging phone markets like Nigeria, where it is ranked as the No. 1 smartphone.

Rollout of mid-tier, entry-level models

The rollout of the new wave of smartphones will begin sometime between September and November with a "mid-tier" priced model of both the touchscreen and keypad, or QWERTY, phones. Details and dates haven't been announced.

"Then we are working on something exciting for the holiday season," Heins said.

"We will be continuing to develop a portfolio also that covers the entry-level segment."

It's a plan Heins is approaching with plenty of caution, as the wounds BlackBerry is trying to heal are still fresh.

Several years ago, the company flooded the market with variations of its smartphone, ranging from a combination keypad and touchscreen version to a flip-phone model. Some observers said it overcomplicated the product line, confused consumers and left too many BlackBerrys on the market.

"I would tend to agree with it," Heins said.

"We want to stay really pure in the future portfolio…be really clear, and be unambiguous."

His vision of the ideal BlackBerry lineup would be a touchscreen and keypad version for each of its three product tiers, which would put six BlackBerry phones on the market at one time. But if one of the lower-priced phones fails to catch on with customers, it'll be scrapped.

"Each and every segment has to make money," he said. "There is no cross-subsidy from one segment to another, and if we don't make money, we don't do it."

Turning a profit at BlackBerry has been a priority for Heins, who began a massive cost-cutting initiative last year that involved laying off about 5,000 employees in a plan to save $1 billion. He achieved that goal about three months ahead of the company's own schedule.

On Thursday, BlackBerry managed to overcome recent quarterly losses and post a US$98-million profit that beat analyst expectations.

Within the results lurked some concerns though, including signs that more BlackBerry users jumped ship to other devices, as subscribers slipped to 76 million from 79 million.

Boosting revenues with services, features

As BlackBerry rolls out its new phones, the company is working behind the scenes to create additional services tied to its popular BlackBerry Messenger and other phone features that could boost revenues.

"The question is how quickly can we really come up with services that we can monetize, and what is this transition curve going to financially look like," Heins said.

"The intent of BlackBerry is not to stay in the service business, the intent is to grow our services business."

In its outlook, BlackBerry said it expects to "approach break-even" results in the first quarter of its current financial year based on lower costs, a more efficient supply chain and improved hardware margins.

Rumours have circulated for months that BlackBerry could sell its hardware business and gravitate towards being a provider of services, such as secure networks. Heins downplayed a separation of its hardware and services divisions.

"BlackBerry is an end-to-end solution," he said.

"Throwing one of these pots away would mean we break our business model in terms of security. Security still matters," he said.

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Tax season facts and figures

Tax season is a festive time for those who are nuts about numbers.

In their honour and for their enjoyment, CBC News has compiled some tax trivia, courtesy of Statistics Canada except where noted, including taxes paid by the rich (and the rest of us) for the tax year 2010, the latest year for which there is a range of data.

25.5 million: number of people filing Canadian tax returns.

$118.6 billion: total personal and non-resident income tax collected (federal, provincial and territorial), in the 12 months to March 31, 2011, according to the federal Department of Finance. Up 8.6 per cent from $109.2 billion in 2009.

(CBC)

$14,500: average income tax paid by families of two or more people. Up from $14,200 in 2009.

$8,200: median (meaning half of the people pay more and half pay less than this) income tax paid by families of two or more people. Unchanged from 2009

15.9%: implied tax rate on families with two or more members. Up from 15.7% in 2009.

$8.3 billion: total value of charitable donations claimed.

$1,437: average total of charitable donations claimed per tax filer.

254,700: number of individuals who made up the wealthiest 1% of tax filers.

21%: percentage of women among the wealthiest 1%. Up from 11% in 1982.

10.6%: how much of Canada's total income the wealthiest 1% of tax filers ( i.e. those who paid the most tax in) accounted for. Down from its 2006 peak of 12.1% and up from 7.0% in the early 1980s.

21.2%: proportion of total income taxes collected paid by the richest 1%. Down from a 2007 peak of 23.3%.

$201,400: minimum annual income to be considered in the wealthiest 1%.

$283,400: the median income of the richest 1%.

$28,400: the median income of the remaining 99%.

$90,100: the median income tax paid by the richest 1%.

$1,800: the median income tax paid by the remaining 99%.

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10 celebrities who tried to dodge the taxman

Most Canadians resign themselves to the certainty of death and taxes, but there are those around the world who take exception to giving the taxman his share of their earnings and sometimes end up on the wrong side of the law. Here's a list of 10 high-profile cases.

1. Walter Anderson — A telecommunications entrepreneur, Anderson was convicted in 2005 of the largest tax evasion scheme in U.S. history for using a string of offshore companies to hide income on which he owed more than $200 million US in taxes.

2. Gérard Depardieu — The French actor moved to a Belgian village and became a Russian citizen all in order to avoid the French government's attempts to impose a 75 per cent tax on those earning more than one million euros (about $1.4 million). Russian President Vladimir Putin personally presented him with a Russian passport in January in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Depardieu insists he is no tax evader — he has paid 145 million euros (about $185 million) in taxes during his lifetime. The wealth tax was ultimately rejected by France's Constitutional Court but could potentially be resurrected in a different form.

Italy's former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was convicted last year of tax fraud of almost $13 million. (Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty)

3. Paul Hogan — The Crocodile Dundee actor always denied engaging in tax evasion but ended up reaching a settlement last year with the Australian Taxation Office, which accused him and colleague John Cornell of using offshore tax havens to avoid paying nearly $153 million, even temporarily banning him from leaving the country.

4. Wesley Snipes — The U.S. star of the Blade film trilogy was sentenced to three years in federal prison for failing to file income tax returns dating back to 1998 and owing $17 million. He's due to be released this summer.

5. Willie Nelson — The singer received a bill for $16.7 million in back taxes in 1990. He responded by releasing the album, The IRS Tapes: Who Will Buy My Memories? His fans answered the question by buying up at auction the personal assets the government had seized and promptly giving them back to the country singer. Nelson was back in the black by 1993.

6. Silvio Berlusconi — The former Italian premier was convicted last year of tax fraud of almost $13 million and sentenced to four years in prison after inflating the price his media empire paid for TV rights to U.S. movies and pocketing the difference.

New York hotel mogul Leona Helmsley, shown in 2003, is best remembered for her statement that 'only the little people pay taxes.' (Keith Bedford/Getty)

7. Leona Helmsley — The late New York hotel mogul, nicknamed the "Queen of Mean," is best remembered for her statement that "only the little people pay taxes." She was accused of evading tax to the tune of several million dollars and sentenced in 1989 to 16 years in prison — but served only 19 months, plus an additional two years under house arrest.

8. Nicolas Cage — The U.S. Internal Revenue Service filed a tax lien against the actor in July 2009 for $6.2 million. He had been earlier accused of under-reporting income and inappropriately claiming such items as his personal jet.

9. Tolis Voskopoulos — This once-popular Greek singer was found to have evaded $7.5 million in taxes but the issue of how much money he will pay in penalties is still before the Greek courts. His wife, Angela Gerekou, has already paid her penalty, losing her job as the country's deputy culture minister when the charges were first announced three years ago.

10. Al Capone — This infamous gangster was brought down not because of convictions for his more serious crimes, such as leading an organized crime syndicate in Chicago in the 1920s, but for evading taxes amounting to $215,080.48 US — about $2.8 million today. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison and served about seven and a half years of his sentence and paid all of the outstanding taxes and fines before being released on parole in 1939.

With files from The Associated Press

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Employees rate their employers, CEOs on Glassdoor

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has an 84 per cent approval rating so far this year on Glassdoor. Last year, former co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Laziridis got a rating of just 36 per cent. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)What's it like to work at struggling smartphone maker BlackBerry, one of Canada's big banks or scandal-ridden engineering firm SNC-Lavalin?

So far in this year, BlackBerry staff have given their CEO Thorsten Heins an 84 per cent approval rating and the company's rating stands at 3.6 out of five on the website Glassdoor, a job and career site where employees anonymously dish on the pros and cons of their companies and bosses.

"It's peeling back all of the layers on a lot of things in the workplace that used to be taboo, and it's all according to the employees," said Glassdoor spokesman Scott Dobroski.

Employees can disclose salaries, how a company conducts job interviews, the company's recreation activities, workplace photos and in some cases even talk about what the bathroom is like, Dobroski said from Sausalito, Calif.

Facebook's Zuckerberg top-rated CEO

Glassdoor recently came out with the 50 highest rated CEOs for 2013, based on employee reviews, and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg came out on top.

Zuckerberg scored a 99 per cent approval rating from Facebook employees, up 14 percentage points from 2012 despite turbulence surrounding the social media site when it became publicly traded, Dobroski said.

No Canadian CEO made the top 50 list, but the California company has expanded content for its north of the border audience with about 8,000 Canadian companies, government agencies and universities and colleges reviewed by employees.

CEO Steve Williams of Suncor (TSX:SU) scored the highest of any Canadian chief executive with a 96 per cent approval rating from the Calgary company's employees. Suncor got a 3.5 rating out of five.

Glassdoor verifies email addresses and screens content for accuracy, Dobroski said. Workplace and CEO comments can't only be negative, he added.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg scored a 99 per cent approval rating from his employees on Glassdoor, up 14 points from last year. (Robert Galbraith/Reuters)"About 15 to 20 per cent of the content that is submitted to Glassdoor is actually rejected because it either doesn't meet our community guidelines or it appears suspicious."

McGill University associate professor Lisa Cohen said job review websites provide useful information to prospective employees, especially when it comes to salaries and corporate culture.

The information is also potentially valuable for a company's human resources staff, she said.

'Nothing is a secret'

"This is a read on how well you're doing," said Cohen, who teaches organizational behaviour at McGill's Desautels Faculty of Management.

"I think another thing this website shows us is that nothing is a secret," she said.

Cohen noted the web is full of sites that rate everyone from teachers to doctors to dentists.

An employee at Waterloo, Ont., based BlackBerry (TSX:BB) recently said the upside of working there was: "Cutting edge technology, rapid learning environment, smart people.

1. But another employee said the downside was: BlackBerry is "going down, going down, going down, going down..... cellphone market is so cruel to every competitor, be aware of your choice."

BlackBerry launched its new Z10 touchscreen smartphone this year, but has been struggling to hold on to market share.

Former co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis had an overall approval rating of 36 per cent in 2011 and the company had a 3.1 rating, according to employees.

CEO Gerry McCaughey of CIBC (TSX:CM) scored just a 54 per cent approval rating from the big bank's employees, but CIBC got a three out of five rating.

Meanwhile, an employee at SNC-Lavalin said it's a "great company, revitalized with new management that is desperately trying to pitch itself."

Former SNC-Lavalin CEO Pierre Duhaime was relieved of his duties in March 2012 and is facing fraud charges stemming from a contract involving the building of the multibillion-dollar McGill University Health Centre in Montreal.

But employee advice to senior management was: "Overreaction to the corruption scandal has turned to over-correction."

Dobroski said the average CEO approval rating in Canada is 70 per cent, compared with 69 per cent in the United Kingdom and 66 per cent in the United States.

Dobroski said the Canadian companies with the most content on Glassdoor were Ontario Power Generation, City of Toronto and the University of Toronto.

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Bank of Cyprus big savers to lose up to 60%

Banks in Cyprus opend for normal business for the second day, but with strict restrictions on how much money their clients can access, after being shut for nearly two weeks. (Petros Karajias/Associated Press)

Large depositors at Cyprus' largest bank may be forced to accept losses of up to 60 per cent, far more than initially feared under the European rescue package to save the country from bankruptcy, officials said Saturday.

Deposits of more than 100,000 euros ($128,000) at the Bank of Cyprus would lose 37.5 per cent in money that would be converted into bank shares, according to a finance ministry decree obtained by The Associated Press. In a second raid on these accounts, depositors also could lose up to 22.5 per cent more, depending on what experts determine is needed to prop up the bank's reserves.

Banking and finance ministry officials confirmed these details in interviews with the AP. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to publicly discuss the issue.

The deposits that converted to bank shares would theoretically allow depositors to eventually recover their losses. But the shares now hold little value and it's uncertain when, if ever, the shares will regain a value equal to the depositors' losses.

Europe has demanded that large depositors in the country's two largest banks —Bank of Cyprus and Laiki Bank — accept across-the-board losses in order to pay for the 16 billion euro ($20.5 billion bailout). But officials had previously spoken of a loss to big depositors of 30 to 40 per cent.

Analysts said Saturday that imposing bigger losses on major depositors could further squeeze already crippled businesses as Cyprus tries to rebuild its banking sector in exchange for the international rescue package.

"Most of the damage will be done to businesses which had their money in the bank" to pay suppliers and employees, said University of Cyprus economics Professor Sofronis Clerides. "There's quite a difference lbetween a 30 per cent loss and a 60 per cent loss."

Russians expected to drain accounts

With businesses shrinking, the country could be dragged down into an even deeper recession, he said.

There's also concern that large depositors, including many wealthy Russians, would take their money and run once capital restrictions that Cypriot authorities have imposed on bank transactions to prevent such a possibility are lifted in about a month.

Cyprus agreed on Monday to make bank depositors with accounts over 100,000 euros to contribute to a financial rescue in order to secure 10 billion euros ($12.9 billion) in loans from the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund.

Cyprus needed to scrounge up 5.8 billion euros ($7.4 billion) on its own in order to clinch the larger package, and banks had remained shut for nearly two weeks until politicians hammered out a deal, opening again on Thursday.

But fearing that savers would rush to pull their money out in mass once banks reopened, Cypriot authorities imposed a raft of restrictions including daily withdrawal limits of 300 euros ($384) for individuals and 5,000 euros ($6,400) for businesses — the first so-called capital controls that any country has applied in the eurozone's 14-year history.

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Sharing economy probed in study funded by City of Vancouver

Vancouver is already home to several car-sharing ventures, but researchers believe there's more potential in the local sharing economy. (Josh Reynolds/Associated Press)

The City of Vancouver is helping fund new research into growing the local sharing economy.

Vancouver is already home to car-sharing and office-sharing. Now, researchers with The Sharing Project are looking to identify further demand through focus groups, interviews and surveys.

"Sharing is not a new idea. It's been around forever," said lead researcher Chip Diplock.

But the idea has taken off since the 2008 recession. Ventures in other cities share couture clothing, sporting goods and even wedding décor — and Diplock thinks there's room for more shared goods and services in Vancouver.

"We want to highlight what things are screaming to be shared, and how do people want to share them."

The city has donated $15,000 it secured from a provincial grant to the project. Sticking with the spirit of sharing, the researchers are looking to crowdfund another $20,000.

"Part of why we're funding the research [is] we see it as a great opportunity to help meet the greenest city goals, help businesses grow and improve the quality of life," said Sean Pander, the city's assistant director of sustainability.

"But we want to understand what are those other opportunities? We were kind of surprised at how successful and quickly car-sharing took off."

Officials hope the project can help bring Vancouver closer to being the greenest city in the world while helping out local businesses.

"We see it as an opportunity to help meet our greenest city goals — reducing material consumption and waste," Pander said.

"It's [also] very effective to help non-profits or businesses expand and meet community and societal goals without needing taxpayer money."

An initial report from The Sharing Project is expected later in the spring.

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Ontario's sunshine list sees double-digit growth

The number of public-sector workers earning more than $100,000 has grown, the provincial government's latest "sunshine list" reveals.

The list, released annually, now includes the names of 88,412 people, an increase of 11 per cent over the number of individuals included on the list last year. Since 2009, its ranks have grown by 39 per cent.

Tom Mitchell, the president and CEO of Ontario Power Generation, was paid $1.7 million in 2012. (Derek Gee/The Buffalo News/Associated Press)

Progressive Conservative finance critic Peter Shurman suggested the sharp growth in the size of the list demonstrates the need for a wage freeze.

"This is a government that wants people in Ontario to believe that they have effictively dealt with salaries in the broader public sector," Shurman said. "They haven't and this is the proof that they haven't, and this is the reason why we say we need a legislated mandatory wage freeze."

The sunshine list was brought in under the Mike Harris-led Progressive Conservative government in the mid-1990s, but the $100,000 threshold for inclusion has never been changed. Harris said it served as an important check on the public payroll.

Top earners

Executives from provincial energy agencies topped the list of earners in the public sector in 2012.

The Canadian Press reported that Tom Mitchell, the president and CEO of Ontario Power Generation, was the highest paid at $1.7 million. Nearly 8,000 other people who work at OPG also made the list.

Hydro One CEO Laura Formosa made $1.04 million last year.

Other top earners included:

• Robert Bell, the CEO of Toronto's University Health Network, who collected $828,552 between his salary and taxable benefits
• Catherine Zahn, the president and chief executive officer of Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, who earned $746,321
• Rod Phillips, the president and chief executive officer of Ontario Lottery and Gaming, earned a salary of $672,989

All of these executives made far more than Dalton McGuinty, the former premier who pulled in a salary just shy of $209,000 in 2012.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says no executive of a public-sector agency or ministry should be making more than twice the salary of the premier. (CBC)

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, who was paid just over $158,000 last year, suggested that the premier's salary should be used as a measuring stick when it comes to evaluating the salaries of executives in the public sector.

"We shouldn't see any CEO in any public-sector agency or ministry earning more than twice what the premier makes," Horwath told reporters Thursday.

Higher learning

The sunshine list also reveals the salaries of Ontario's university leaders, with presidents at some of the province's largest schools earning a combination of salary and benefits in the range of $400,000.

David Naylor, the president of the University of Toronto, was paid a salary of $388,400.84 in 2012, but also received taxable benefits of $52,951.48.

Elsewhere in Toronto, York University president and vice-chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri earned $478,851.66 in salary last year and Ryerson University president Sheldon Levy earned $445,780.14 and another $18,239.32 in taxable benefits.

In the nation's capital, Allan Rock was paid a salary of $394,999.92 as president of the University of Ottawa, while Carleton University president and vice-chancellor Roseann O'Reilly Runte earned $358,474.46 as well as another $46,095.47 in taxable benefits.

At the University of Western Ontario, Amit Chakma, the president and vice-chancellor, was paid a salary of $479,600.04 as well as taxable benefits of $41,123.21.

Daniel Woolf, the principal of Queen's University, earned a salary of $360,800, as well as taxable benefits worth $21,666.90.

The CBC's Mike Crawley reported that nearly 15,000 university staff were listed on the sunshine list.

Time for adjustment?

Some critics say that with the ever-expanding list, it might be time to consider raising the $100,000 threshold.

However, Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa said Thursday the governing Liberals have no plans to do so and Premier Kathleen Wynne said that $100,000 remains a lot of money for most people.

Frank Ramagnano of the Toronto Professional Fire Fighters' Union pointed to city firefighters who actually make less than $100,000 annually, but they get placed on the list because they were needed for overtime.

"When in fact, somebody's actually doing something to help the city out by sacrificing their summer to come in and make sure that the fire boat is there and available for emergencies," he said.

He said some firefighters are called in for overtime because they are specialized in some way.

Ramagnano says he wants the government to bring the list in line with inflation — which would mean that those who made $100,000 in 1996 would have to make $140,000 today to make the list.

Armine Yalnizyan of Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says only a small fraction of workers in Ontario have salaries that exceed the $100,000 threshold.

"In Ontario about six per cent of the population of tax filers have an income over $100,000," she said. "So there's nothing wrong with seeing who's in that group."

Yalnizyan would also like the list to "shine a light on the private sector."

CBC.ca is publishing the entire sunshine list in an online format you can filter and search yourself. Click on the categories at the bottom of this page to search the lists.

Follow these three steps below to filter and isolate the information you're looking for.

You'll need to set the tables to Google's "Classic look," which you can do by clicking the "Help" tab and then clicking "Back to Classic look."

Some search tips

• You must click the "clear filter" button between searches.

• If you don't see the salary information after conducting a search, click on the small triangle on the right side of the page. This will make visible the columns you can't see.

Read the sunshine list, broken down into categories:

With files from the Canadian Press

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Hospital parking rates a 'tax' on sick Canadians

Rising hospital parking rates amount to a tax on ailing Canadians, says one medical specialist.

A CBC Marketplace report found many Canadians are missing hospital appointments and experiencing added stress due to the costs of parking at their local health centre.

"Parking fees are a penalty for having a disease," says cancer specialist Dr. Bob Winston. "It seems like an unfair tax on my patients."

That "tax" affects patients in many negative ways, he says. Some patients tell him they can't afford to come to appointments and the overall cost, plus the pressure to keep feeding the meter, adds a level of stress that can interfere with their treatments and recovery.

"My patients have a lot of stress from the get-go, and with the addition of more stress with regards to the parking is sort of salt in the wound," he told Marketplace co-host Erica Johnson.

Vicki McKenna, vice-president of the Ontario Nursing Association, agrees.

"It's bad enough that you're having to seek treatment, and that you have an illness, and sometimes a chronic illness, but then you have to worry about parking? It just doesn't sit right with me, and it shouldn't be the way it is."

Survey finds costs create stress

As part of its investigation, Marketplace surveyed over 1,000 Canadians, and found 52 per cent said parking costs affect how often they can visit a hospital, or for how long.

Among the findings:

• 38 per cent said they couldn't visit a patient as frequently as they wanted.
• 20 per cent felt they couldn't afford to visit patients at all.
• 3 per cent skipped medical appointments.
• 14 per cent said they couldn't afford to volunteer.

Winston says nothing should interfere with patient visits.

"Patients benefit hugely by having family and friends come in, both from a psychological point of view but also from a practical point of view," he said. "Any inhibitions for support for the patients is the wrong thing."

The survey also found 72 per cent of hospital visitors said parking costs added stress to their visits, which can have a negative impact on their health.

"Adding the economic stressors on top of the physical stressors really does add to the recovery time, how well they do, and it even affects interpersonal relationships," McKenna said.

Financial strain on families

The stress of that financial burden affects more than just the patients.

Vicki McKenna, vice-president of the Ontario Nursing Association, says hospitals should focus more on patient care, not revenues. (CBC)

Heather Stewart has made hundreds of trips to Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children since her daughter Kathryn was diagnosed with cancer in 2008. By her count, she made 147 hospital visits in 2011 alone, and has spent thousands of dollars on parking.

"This is a huge additional stressor on our family," she said. "We're tapped. Let alone the emotional strain of having an ill child, it's also the financial strain. We've made huge sacrifices, and we would do it all again because our daughter's worth it, but to feel like you're getting pinched again is disheartening."

Parking can be a major moneymaker for hospitals. The Hospital for Sick Children – which raised its parking rates in January – netted $5 million in parking fees in 2012.

Sick Kids spokesman Jim Garner says he has "a lot of empathy" for families like the Stewarts, but says "Sick Kids can't be responsible for the full cost over the course of treatment of a child that's going through a complicated disease."

He defends the costs, saying that $5 million goes into research, infrastructure and patient care.

An online petition by the Ontario Parents Advocating for Children with Cancer, which calls for reduced parental parking rates at the Hospital for Sick Children, currently has 998 signatures.

In response, Garner says "the hospital tries to do everything it can do in a responsible and balanced way to support families and particularly those families who are in need."

He added that hospital representatives would be willing to meet the petitioning parents, "provided that it will be a constructive meeting."

Privatization increasing prices

Many hospitals are turning to privatized parking, which can be a double-edged sword, McKenna says; it allows hospitals to concentrate on patient care, but it means someone else controls the parking.

"Unless you have it in your contract specifically about how it will be staffed, how it will be maintained, what the max parking fees are… you lose control of it. And I think that's what's happened in most hospitals in Ontario."

McKenna concedes that hospitals need reliable revenue streams, but argues that it's unfair to put the burden on already troubled families, and says hospitals should find another way to make money.

"I understand (charging for parking), but we have to take it a bit further than just talking about how much revenue we can get. We have to think about there's a cost to that, not only to the patient, but to the system overall.

"Decisions should be made about patients and patient care, and the quality of health services. Not about how much revenue we can make," she added.

Stewart agrees.

I'm not saying I want free parking," she said. "I'm saying we need to consider who we're trying to tap for this money.

"You can't keep putting more stressors on families, people who are already tapped or else you're going to see a bigger drain on the healthcare system (because) they've got all these other stressors including money, that's causing more health issues. It's kind of a vicious circle."

Watch Marketplace's episode, Hospital Parking Pain, Friday at 8 p.m. (8:30 p.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador).

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Cyprus banks open for 2nd day amid tight controls

Banks in Cyprus are open for normal business for the second day, but with strict restrictions on how much money their clients can access, after being shut for nearly two weeks to prevent people from draining their accounts as the country's politicians sought a way out of an acute financial crisis.

Small lines formed outside some banks just after opening time, but most were gone by mid-morning Friday.

Capital controls have been imposed on transactions, however, meaning that people can only withdraw up to 300 euros (about $300 Cdn) a day in cash, and are limited in how much money they can transfer from their accounts. People leaving the country can only take a maximum 1,000 euros ($1,300) in cash with them, and credit card payments abroad are also limited.

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Tax season facts and figures

Tax season is a festive time for those who are nuts about numbers.

In their honour and for their enjoyment, CBC News has compiled some tax trivia, courtesy of Statistics Canada except where noted, including taxes paid by the rich (and the rest of us) for the tax year 2010, the latest year for which there is a range of data.

25.5 million: number of people filing Canadian tax returns.

$118.6 billion: total personal and non-resident income tax collected (federal, provincial and territorial), in the 12 months to March 31, 2011, according to the federal Department of Finance. Up 8.6 per cent from $109.2 billion in 2009.

(CBC)

$14,500: average income tax paid by families of two or more people. Up from $14,200 in 2009.

$8,200: median (meaning half of the people pay more and half pay less than this) income tax paid by families of two or more people. Unchanged from 2009

15.9%: implied tax rate on families with two or more members. Up from 15.7% in 2009.

$8.3 billion: total value of charitable donations claimed.

$1,437: average total of charitable donations claimed per tax filer.

254,700: number of individuals who made up the wealthiest 1% of tax filers.

21%: percentage of women among the wealthiest 1%. Up from 11% in 1982.

10.6%: how much of Canada's total income the wealthiest 1% of tax filers ( i.e. those who paid the most tax in) accounted for. Down from its 2006 peak of 12.1% and up from 7.0% in the early 1980s.

21.2%: proportion of total income taxes collected paid by the richest 1%. Down from a 2007 peak of 23.3%.

$201,400: minimum annual income to be considered in the wealthiest 1%.

$283,400: the median income of the richest 1%.

$28,400: the median income of the remaining 99%.

$90,100: the median income tax paid by the richest 1%.

$1,800: the median income tax paid by the remaining 99%.

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Cyprus banks reopen with transaction restrictions

Banks in Cyprus reopened to customers for the first time in nearly two weeks Thursday, albeit with strict restrictions on transactions, after being closed to prevent people withdrawing all their savings during the country's acute financial crisis.

Large lines had formed outside the banks ahead of the opening of banks for six hours from noon. Systems were frozen ahead of the start of business, and guards from a private security firm reinforced police outside some ATMs and banks in the capital, Nicosia.

Branches of the country's troubled second-largest lender, Laiki, didn't open on time due to a delay in the bank's computer system. Laiki spokesman Costas Archimandrites said there had been an initial issue with the bank's system but that 80 per cent of branches had opened after about half an hour.

At one branch in central Nicosia which was still shut nearly an hour later, an employee emerged from the bank and pleaded for patience with the line of about 50 people. Most waited calmly, although some began to complain about being made to wait.

Banks in Cyprus have been shut since March 16 to prevent people draining their accounts as politicians scrambled to come up with a plan to raise enough funds for Cyprus to qualify for €10 billion (roughly $13 billion US) in bailout loans for its stricken banking sector. An initial plan that would have seized up to 10 per cent of people's bank deposits was soundly rejected in parliament, leaving politicians struggling to come up with an alternative.

Withdrawals limited to €300 euros

The deal was finally reached in Brussels early Monday, and imposes severe losses on deposits of over €100,000 in the country's two largest banks, Laiki and Bank of Cyprus. Laiki will be broken up, with its good assets being absorbed by Bank of Cyprus. The exact amounts of the losses have not yet been officially announced.

Although the banks have opened, customers are severely limited in what transactions they can carry out. Capital controls, imposed to prevent worried savers and businesses rushing to withdraw all their money, include limiting cash withdrawals to €300 euros ($383) per day per person and limiting payments abroad to €5,000.

No cheques can be cashed, although they can be paid in, and people leaving the country can only take up to €1,000, or the equivalent in foreign currency, with them in cash.

The country's general accounting office said pensions and other social security payments, together with salaries for government employees, will be in bank accounts next Tuesday and Wednesday.

The restrictions will be reviewed daily and are initially in place until next Wednesday, the decision published by the Finance Ministry states.

"I believe this will be a very difficult day for both people and bank employees because no matter how much information there was, things were changing all the time," said Costas Kyprianides, a grocery supplier in Nicosia. "Even us traders, like myself, have so many checks which I need to deposit so I can make ends meet."

During the bank closure, ATMs were working but quickly ran out of money. Those of the two troubled banks, Laiki and Bank of Cyprus, had imposed withdrawal limits of 100 euros a day.

"Up until last night things kept on changing," said store owner Antonis Arotokritou. "There's an overall panic and uncertainty from both the bankers and the rest of the people."

The stock market announced it would remain closed on Thursday "in order to ensure the smooth functioning of the stock market and protect investors." It too has been closed since March 16.

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Canada's economy returns to growth in January

Canada's economy returned to growth in January, with GDP expanding by 0.2 per cent during the month, a turnaround after a decline of the same amount in December.

Statistics Canada said Thursday that manufacturing, mining and the oil and gas industry all expanded, while the agriculture forestry and construction sectors shrank.

The finance and insurance sector also contracted.

All in all, output from goods-producing industries expanded by 0.4 per cent, while the service sector expanded by 0.2 per cent.

Manufacturing output expanded 1.2 per cent in January, following a 1.9 per cent decline in December. Mining and oil and gas expanded by a slight 0.2 per cent, the fourth consecutive monthly gain.

While not a large part of Canada's economy, the arts and entertainment industry rebounded by an impressive 4.1 per cent in January from December's level. That was almost entirely due to the end of the NHL lockout, the data agency said.

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U.S. jobless claims jump

The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits jumped by 16,000 last week, the second straight weekly increase.

But the longer-term trend in layoffs remained consistent with an improved job market. Applications increased to a seasonally adjusted 357,000 for the week ending March 23, the Labor Department said Thursday.

That's up from 341,000 the previous week, which was revised slightly higher. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, rose 2,250 to 343,000.

Even with the gain, the average is only slightly higher than the previous week's five-year low of 340,750. Economists pay closer attention to the four-week average because it smooths out week-to-week fluctuations.

Despite the two weeks of higher initial unemployment claims, "the overall trend of stronger labor market growth continues," Jennifer Lee, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note to clients.

First-time applications are a proxy for layoffs. They have been declining steadily since November.

At the same time, hiring has accelerated, lowering the unemployment rate in February to a four-year low of 7.7 per cent.

Unemployment benefit applications surged during the recession as companies slashed millions of jobs.

The number of people seeking aid averaged only 320,000 a week in 2007. That figure soared to 418,000 in 2008 and 574,000 in 2009.

Hiring up

But as layoffs and firings eased, applications for unemployment aid slowly but steadily came down. They fell to 459,000 in 2010, 409,000 in 2011, and 375,000 last year.

Through the first 12 weeks of this year they are averaging roughly 353,000.

The total number of people receiving some kind of unemployment aid is also down sharply. Nearly 5.5 million people were receiving unemployment aid as of the week ended March 9, the latest data available.

That's up roughly 87,000 from than the previous week but still well below the 7.2 million from a year earlier. The data on total unemployment benefit recipients are not seasonally adjusted and are volatile.

Hiring is up, too. Employers have added an average of 200,000 jobs per month since November. That's nearly double the average from last spring. And economists expect similar job gains in March, in part because of the steady decline in layoffs.

The economy has been showing other signs of strength. U.S. home prices rose 8.1 per cent in January, the fastest annual rate since the peak of the housing boom in the summer of 2006.

And demand for longer-lasting factory goods jumped 5.7 per cent in February, most in five months.

Still, the job market and the economy have a long way to go back to full health. The United States has three million fewer jobs than it did when the Great Recession began in December 2007.

And home prices are down 29 per cent from their peak at the height of the housing bubble in August 2006.

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BlackBerry swings back to profit

BlackBerry posted a profit in the fourth quarter as the smartphone maker gave a first glimpse of its performance since unveiling its latest suite of smartphones several weeks ago.

The Waterloo, Ont.-based company reported a profit of $94 million US or 18 cents per share for quarter ended March 2. That's a turnaround from the recent trend: in the same period a year ago, RIM lost$125 million US or 24 cents per share.

The results surprised analysts who according to Thomson Reuters were expecting on average a loss of 29 cents per share from the company.

The numbers are the first we've seen from RIM since the company unveiled its new Z10 and Q10 smartphones in Canada, the U.K. and abroad. However, they don't include sales from the key U.S. market where the launch was delayed.

The company shipped about one million smartphones on its new BlackBerry 10 operating system in the period, it said. That would include devices sent to retail outlets that landed in customers hands, or also have yet to be sold.

"We have implemented numerous changes at BlackBerry over the past year and those changes have resulted in the company returning to profitability in the fourth quarter," said chief executive Thorsten Heins in a release.

Lazaridis steps down

Meanwhile, the company's longtime subscriber base, which had been growing until the third quarter, dropped to 76 million from 79 million, a sign that more people ditched their older Blackberry models in favour of competitor phones.

"They lost about a million more subscribers than we thought," Jefferies analyst Peter Misek told CBC News after the numbers were released. "But overall this is a better than expected result."

Selling fewer older devices that are less profitable ate into the company's earnings. But the uptick in newer models may be enough to power growth.

"The numbers suggest that they're on a recovery path," Misek said. "But the key question is can they execute it."

Revenue increased to $2.68 billion, coming in below expectations of $2.84 billion, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters.

The company also announced that co-founder Mike Lazaridis will retire as vice-chairman and director on May 1. Lazaridis was the inventor of the iconic BlackBerry device almost two decades ago. He ran the company along with co-CEO Jim Balsillie until early 2012 when the duo were replaced in a management shakeup.

His departure as chair is the last symbolic link to the company's origins. Although he's retiring after 29 years with the company, Lazaridis says he has no plans to sell his significant stock holdings in the company. He still owns almost six per cent of RIM.

BlackBerry shares gained almost two per cent or 26 cents to $14.83 in New York on Thursday.

With files from The Canadian Press

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U.S. economy expands at 0.4% rate

The U.S. economy grew at a slightly faster but still anemic rate at the end of last year.

However, there is hope that growth accelerated in early 2013 despite higher taxes and cuts in government spending.

The economy grew at an annual rate of 0.4 per cent in the October-December quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

That was slightly better than the previous estimate of 0.1 per cent growth. The revision reflected stronger business investment and export sales.

Analysts think the economy is growing at a rate of around 2.5 per cent in the current January-March quarter, which ends this week.

Steady hiring has kept consumers spending this year. And a rebound in company stockpiling, further gains in housing and more business spending also likely drove faster growth in the first quarter.

The 0.4 per cent growth rate for the gross domestic product, the economy's total output of goods and services, was the weakest quarterly performance in almost two years and followed a much faster 3.1 per cent increase in the third quarter.

The fourth quarter was hurt by the sharpest fall in defense spending in 40 years. For all of 2012, the economy grew 2.2 per cent after a 1.8 per cent increase in 2011 and a 2.4 per cent advance in 2010.

Growth appears to be strengthening

Since the recession ended in mid-2009, the economy has been expanding at sub-par rates as a string of problems from higher gas prices to Europe's debt crisis have acted as a drag on the U.S. economy.

Growth appears to be strengthening this year even after taxes increased on Jan. 1 and automatic government spending cuts totaling $85 billion started to take effect on March 1.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the combination of tax increases and spending cuts could trim economic growth this year by about 1.5 percentage points.

The CBO is predicting just 1.5 percent growth for 2013. But so far, the economy is showing signs of holding its own against the fiscal drag.

Employers have added an average of 200,000 jobs a month since November. That helped lower the unemployment rate in February to 7.7 per cent, a four-year low.

Economists expect similar job gains in March, in part because a measure of unemployment benefit applications fell this month to a five-year low.

Sales of previously occupied homes rose in February to the highest level in nearly three years, while builders broke ground on more houses and apartments.

Annual home prices jumped in January by the most since June 2006, according to a closely watched measure. Stock prices have surged.

Fed stays course

On Wednesday, the Standard & Poor's 500 index was within two points of its all-time high. All of that is making consumers feel wealthier, which could lead to more spending.

Consumer spending drives 70 per cent of economic activity. The Federal Reserve still thinks the economy needs aggressive measures to bolster growth.

Last week it stood by its plan to keep a key short-term interest rate near zero until unemployment drops below 6.5 per cent.

The Fed also left unchanged its plan to keep buying $85 billion in bonds until it sees a substantial improvement in the job market.

The slowdown in business inventories trimmed 1.5 percentage point from growth in the fourth quarter and the reductions in defense spending cut another 1.3 percentage point from growth.

Consumer spending was growing at a 1.8 per cent rate in the fourth quarter, slightly better than the 1.6 per cent increase in the third quarter but down from last month's estimate that consumer spending was growing by 2.1 per cent.

That revision was offset by upward revisions in business investment spending on structures and equipment and by stronger sales of U.S. exports.

The government first estimated two months ago that the economy had contracted at an annual rate of 0.1 per cent in the fourth quarter, a decline that was erased by the revisions. The government will release its first look at first quarter growth on April 26.

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Cyprus banks to reopen as guards watch

Cyprus will impose limits on money transfers and dispatch extra security guards to prepare for Thursday's reopening of the banks, which have been shut for almost two weeks to avoid a run during the country's financial drama.

A banking official said Wednesday that new controls will include restrictions on large-scale transfers from the country's two largest and most troubled lenders, Bank of Cyprus and Laiki.

Both are being restructured and big depositors face losses of as much as 40 per cent. But authorities are looking to increase the daily withdrawal limit from €100 to €300 euros (from $130 to $390 Cdn), while payroll payments will be allowed in order to help businesses, which saw a huge slump as people cut down on their spending amid the uncertainty swirling about the banks.

The restrictions will be kept for at least a week until the situation stabilizes, said the official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the measures have yet to be officially announced.

Meanwhile, private security firm G4S will install 180 of its staff at bank branches across the island to keep a lid on possible trouble, said John Argyrou, managing director of the firm's Cypriot arm.

"Our presence there will be for the comfort of both bank staff and clients, but police will also be present," he said. Argyrou said he doesn't foresee any serious trouble unfolding once banks open their doors because people had time to "digest" what has transpired.

"There may be some isolated incidents, but it's in our culture to be civil and patient, so I don't expect anything serious."

Banks closed March 16

Another 120 staff from G4S would be assigned money transportation duties.

Banks were closed on March 16 as politicians scrambled to come up with a plan to raise €5.8 billion euros ($7.5 billion) that would qualify the country for €10 billion ($13 billion) in bailout loans from fellow eurozone partners and the International Monetary Fund.

Under the deal clinched in Brussels early Monday, Cyprus agreed to slash its oversized banking sector and inflict hefty losses on large Laiki and Bank of Cyprus depositors.

Cypriot officials said the deal would mean the country would shift its focus away from being an international center of financial services. That is expected to cost jobs, adding to the unemployment rate which now stands at around 14 per cent.

Business leaders and cabinet ministers were meeting with President Nicos Anastasiades on Wednesday to find ways to get the economy going again.

To give consumers a break, electricity prices will drop 5.75 per cent next month. Over the next couple of weeks, authorities will look into how they can reduce them by another three per cent, said Commerce Minister Giorgos Lakkotrypis.

Interior Minister Socrates Hasikos said his ministry is looking to cut red tape in order to attract foreign investment. He said Chinese investors have shown interest in property sales, adding that a single real estate office has sold some 400 residences to Chinese buyers.

"There has always been interest from foreign investors," said Hasikos.

"The question is how we as the government, as Cyprus, can convince all these investors ...that the environment is secure, that whatever happened has now passed and that they can continue securely investing in Cyprus."

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Gas prices spike at fastest pace since May 2008

Much higher gasoline prices pushed Canada's annual inflation rate up to 1.2 per cent in February, a sharp rise from the previous month's level but still well within policymakers' acceptable range.

Consumer prices increased by 1.2 per cent in the year that ended in February, more than double the annual rate of 0.5 per cent in January, Statistics Canada reported Wednesday.

Much of the increase was attributed to higher transportation prices, which were up two per cent. That was a turnaround after a 0.5 per cent decline in January.

Gasoline prices rose 8.4 per cent in February, the largest monthly increase since May 2008, Statistics Canada reported.

Highest monthly increase since 1991

Prices were higher in every province, but Newfoundland and Labrador saw the highest increase. Consumer prices rose by the smallest amount in Alberta and B.C.

The 0.7 per cent jump in the overall inflation rate is the largest monthly increase in more than 20 years. But even after an increase of that size, Canada's inflation rate is still well within an acceptable range.

"Inflation pressures remain muted," Royal Bank economist Dawn Desjardins said in a note following the release of the data, adding that she doesn't expect the rate to get above two per cent this year.

The Bank of Canada likes to see the inflation rate hover between one and three per cent in guiding its policy decisions.

Besides gasoline and cars, clothing prices increased by five per cent from January to February, food by 0.9 per cent, led by a 6.4 per cent jump as fresh vegetables, while travel accommodation rose by 4.5 per cent.

Restaurant meals were 2.2 per cent more expensive, food cost 1.9 per cent more, rental costs went up by 1.6 per cent, homeowner replacement costs rose by 2.3 per cent and alcohol and tobacco increased by two per cent over the month.

Some items in the CPI basket cost less than they did a year ago. With interest rates remaining at rock-bottom levels, mortgage interest costs were down 4.2 per cent in February from a year ago, video equipment cost 10.2 per cent less, children's clothing was 6.5 per cent lower and digital computing equipment and devices were 5.1 per cent cheaper, Statistics Canada said.

With files from The Canadian Press

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Wiretap order needed to seize text messages, court rules

Police need a wiretap order to seize text messages from your wireless provider, Canada's highest court has ruled.

"Text messaging is, in essence, an electronic conversation. Technical differences inherent in new technology should not determine the scope of protection afforded to private communications," wrote Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella in the reasons for the judgment, which was supported by two judges.

Two other judges agreed in part and in the result, while two remaining judges dissented.

The decision overturns a lower court ruling against Telus Communications that required the company to hand over copies of two of its customers' text messages after it was served with a general warrant by police in Owen Sound, Ont.

Telus had appealed the ruling. The phone provider argued that seizing the messages would constitute "interception" of the communication and would therefore require a wiretap warrant. That is more difficult to get than a general warrant, because of special privacy provisions in the Criminal Code protecting private communications.

Private communications

Abella said the only practical difference between text messaging and traditional voice communications is the transmission process.

"This distinction should not take text messages outside the protection to which private communications are entitled," she wrote.

Justice Thomas Albert Cromwell, one of the two dissenting judges, wrote that while there is "no doubt" that text messages are private communications, his conclusion was that the investigative technique in this case was not an interception of private communications. Therefore a general warrant, rather than a wiretap order, was the appropriate authorization.

That's because the copies of the text messages that police wanted to obtain from Telus were not the copies sent and delivered by Telus customers, but copies kept in a database by Telus for 30 days for "troubleshooting purposes."

"The general warrant did not require Telus to intercept communications, but to provide copies of communications that it had previously intercepted for its own lawful purposes," Cromwell wrote.

Other providers don't keep texts

A general warrant cannot be used except when police show that no other provision of the Criminal Code, such as those pertaining to wiretaps, or any other legislation would allow them to use a given investigative technique. The two judges who partly supported the judgment agreed that the investigative technique that police were using in this case was "subtantively equivalent to an intercept" and therefore a general warrant couldn't be used.

Abella also noted that most wireless providers other than Telus do not keep a database with copies of their customers' text messages. Therefore, police targeting text messages from customers of other wireless providers would need a wiretap authorization.

"This creates a manifest unfairness to individuals who are unlikely to realize that their choice of telecommunications service provider can dramatically affect their privacy," Abella wrote.

The case began when Owen Sound police obtained a warrant in March 2010 ordering Telus to provide from its database copies of all the text messages sent by or addressed to two of its subscribers during the first two weeks of April that year. The messages would be handed over to police daily and might therefore include messages that the users themselves had not necessarily received.

An Ontario Superior Court judge ruled against Telus in 2011. It agreed with Crown lawyers that handing the messages over to police did not constitute "interception," because the copies of the text messages being handed over to police were not intended to be transmitted and were not created and stored for a purpose related to transmitting the messages.

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Carney's wife's quip about London housing raises ire

Mark Carney's wife has drawn criticism from the scandal-hungry British press for suggesting she's having a hard time finding suitable housing in London despite her husband's soon-to-be $1-million salary.

From her Twitter account on Monday, Diana Carney tweeted a link to a story about how French President François Hollande is scaling back a proposal that would have seen higher taxes on the ultra-rich. That tax plan had caused France's ultra-rich to leave France in droves, and set up in London, thereby decreasing the supply of high-end homes.

According to multiple media reports, Carney tweeted the link with the following comment: "Maybe I'll be able to find a place to live in London after all."

Diana Carney tweets from the account @DianaC2020, which is a protected account — meaning followers must be approved by Carney herself before being able to view the things she tweets.

The British press jumped all over the comment, considering her husband Mark Carney will be paid more than $1 million when he starts his job as the head of the Bank of England in June. The role also comes with a housing allowance of $7,682 per week.

"Her husband is getting a housing allowance that is more than many of my constituents earn in 10 years," Labour MP John Mann was quoted as saying in The Daily Mail. "I would be happy to help her find suitable accommodation. I'm prepared to move out of my London flat for her which will be available at just four per cent of her housing allowance."

Carney's compensation package has raised eyebrows at a time when there are more than two million unemployed Britons. He will earn more than his predecessor, Mervyn King.

Carney was on track to have a lucrative career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs before making the leap to the public sector more than a decade ago, first to the Department of Finance and then to head the Bank of Canada.

He received many glowing reviews for his steady stewardship of Canada's economy during the recent financial crisis. Canada's central bank has yet to name his replacement.

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Niko Resources offering $157M in assets

Niko Resources Ltd. said Wednesday that it is in advanced talks to sell certain as non-core assets for $157 million.

The Calgary-based oil and gas producer active in Asia and elsewhere says it hopes to sign definitive agreements with two separate purchasers by the end of April.

Niko did not say what specific assets were up for sale or who the purchasers were, adding that further details would be provided as the transactions progress.

Meanwhile, the company said talks were also ongoing with other third parties regarding farm-outs and other non-core asset dispositions, "with offers on certain of these expected in the next few weeks."

Niko Resources Ltd. is engaged in the exploration, development and production of natural gas and oil in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Kurdistan region of Iraq, Trinidad, Pakistan and Madagascar.

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Starbucks CEO tells anti-gay investor: 'sell your shares'

The CEO of coffee chain Starbucks is earning praise from same sex marriage advocates for the company's staunch support of gay rights, including urging a group of activist shareholders to sell their shares if they don't like the company's policies.

At the Starbucks annual general meeting on Friday, chief executive Howard Schultz was accosted by Tom Strobhar, the head of a group called the National Organization for Marriage, an activist group that has lobbied hard against recent legislative moves to legalize same sex marriage and other contentious gay rights issues.

'Sell your shares of Starbucks and buy shares in another company.'—Howard Schultz to an antigay investor

The NOM had called for a boycott of Starbucks locations after it emerged in 2012 that the ubiquitous chain of coffee restaurants was outspoken in favour of gay rights in its internal diversity policies.

At the annual meeting, Strobhar suggested the company's support of gay rights was bad for business, as it was costing the company sales it might otherwise have had.

"If you feel, respectfully, that you can get a higher return than the 38 per cent you got last year, it's a free country," Schultz said. "You can sell your shares of Starbucks and buy shares in another company. Thank you very much." His reaction drew loud applause from the audience.

Starbucks has come out as one of the more forceful corporate defenders of gay rights, a battle that will be top of mind in the U.S. Tuesday as the Supreme Court hears arguments in two major gay rights cases — one about the legality of California's Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that questioned the legality of same sex marriages, and the other the Federal Defence of Marriage Act, a 1996 law on the same topic.

The issue has moved from being a rights issue to a corporate one in recent weeks, as a number of business titans have made statements.

Earlier this month, Starbucks was one of dozens of companies that urged lawmakers to legalize same-sex marriage across America, saying it would save them billions in human resources costs by being able to streamline benefits plans

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6 tax tips for parents

In January, Ottawa paid out more than $2 billion in GST tax credits, child tax benefits and universal child care benefits. To ensure you get your share of those and other benefits and tax deductions, we've compiled a rundown of some of the things to think about when it comes to your kids and your taxes — from birth to when they leave the nest.

1. Claim birth-related medical costs

Claim on your return such expenses as the cost of a hospital room or a nurse's pre-natal care.

2. Apply for Canada child benefits

In British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, you can apply for child benefits (see below) at the same time as you register a birth — if you are the birth mother and a resident of one of those provinces. The information will be sent electronically to the Canada Revenue Agency.

3. Apply for a social insurance number for your child

New parents need a SIN for their offspring to take advantage of benefits and programs to encourage education savings, including:

• The registered education savings plan (RESP): Parents, other family members and friends can contribute to an RESP as a way of saving funds for a child's post-secondary education. You don't get a tax deduction on the contribution, but the income earned once the money is inside the RESP is not taxed until it is paid out to the beneficiary, who is the one to pay the tax. The federal government can also contribute to an RESP in the form of grants. Quebec and Alberta provide added incentives, and Saskatchewan will do so beginning in the 2013 tax year. Having an RESP may also qualify you for:
• The Canada Learning Bond: For children born after 2003 whose family is receiving the national child benefit supplement, the federal government will contribute $500 to an RESP to help cover the costs of a post-secondary education (it will also pay $25 toward the cost of starting an RESP account). It will continue to contribute $100 for each year that the family qualifies for the supplement up to age 15 and to a maximum of $2,000.
• The Canada Education Savings Grant: The federal government adds 20 cents for every $1 of the first $2,500 saved in an RESP each year. Depending on the family income, the government might also provide an extra 10 or 20 cents on every $1 of the first $500 saved annually in an RESP. The grant has a maximum lifetime limit of $7,200 and is paid out up until the end of the calendar year the child turns 17.

4. Claim all federal and provincial credits and deductions for which you're eligible

• Child tax credit: In the 2012 tax year, the federal credit is $2,191 for each child under 18 (19 in Saskatchewan), which works out to tax savings of around $329 per child. Manitoba and Yukon also have additional amounts for children under 18, and Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Nunavut have them for children under six.
• Children's fitness credit: Claim up to $500 annually in sports and fitness activity fees per child under the age of 16, resulting in a maximum savings of $75 per child. The program must last at least eight weeks and be weekly; if it's a sports- or fitness-related day camp, it must run for five consecutive days. For children up to 18 with disabilities, claim an additional $500.
• Children's arts tax credit: Claim up to $500 annually for children who were younger than 16 at the beginning of the year (or younger than 18 if disabled) and who took part in an eligible program of artistic, cultural, recreational or developmental activity. Besides traditional arts programs, this also includes such activities as academic tutoring and Scout and Girl Guide programs.
• Child care deduction: This is a deduction, as opposed to a tax credit, which lowers your taxable income. The parent with the lower income claims $7,000 for each child under seven and $4,000 for children age seven to 16. You must provide a receipt from the care provider.
• Universal child care benefit: All families, regardless of income, are eligible to receive $100 each month per child under six. Apply using the Canada child benefits application.
• Canada child tax benefit: The eligibility and amount of this monthly non-taxable benefit for each child under 18 is determined by total family income, province of residence and number of children. If you file late, payment may be temporarily put on hold as the amount is based on income reported on your annual tax returns.
• National child benefit supplement: This is a federal supplement that tops up the Canada child tax benefit for low-income families with a children under 18. Families get a monthly payment of $181.41 for the first child; $160.50 for the second child; and $152.66 for each additional child. The supplement is reduced if the family's net income is more than $24,863 and could affect social assistance benefits since many provinces and territories treat it as income.
• Child disability benefit: This is a tax-free benefit for families who care for children under 18 with mental or physical disabilities. Check out the CRA calculator to see what benefits you're entitled to.
• Adoption expenses: Claim a tax credit in the year the adoption is made final, for a child under 18. For the 2012 tax year, the maximum credit is $11,440, which amounts to tax savings of $1,716.
• Transit pass cost: Public transit passes used by children who were younger than 19 at the end of the tax year can be claimed by either parent (including common-law partners).
• Tuition, education and textbook amounts: Students enrolled full time or part time at a university or college or other educational institution certified by the government and who pay more than $100 per institution in tuition fees can claim the total of their tuition fees. Fulltime students can claim an additional $400 each month that they are enrolled fulltime, plus $65 a month for textbooks. Part time students can claim an additional $120 each month and $20 a month for textbooks. If there are education-related amounts leftover after the student has claimed all he or she can on their own return, these can be transferred to a parent, grandparent, spouse or common law partner up to a maximum of $5,000. Unclaimed amounts carried forward from a previous year by the student cannot be transferred.
• Student loan interest: Claim the interest paid on your student loan in 2012 or the preceding five years for post-secondary education.
• Moving costs: Claim eligible moving expenses if you moved in order to attend a university, college or other post-secondary educational institution full time.

5. Ask your employer to deduct at source

Tell your employer to deduct any child amounts, tuition, education and textbook amounts and amounts for eligible dependants to lower the tax you pay on your paycheque, so you don't have to wait until your refund to get what's coming to you. A personal tax credits return shows you what's covered.

6. File a tax return for your child

Filing a return for children — even those who make just a few dollars babysitting — allows parents to claim deductions and credits on their behalf that may be carried forward indefinitely, providing tax savings in later years when those children's earnings are high and increasing available contribution room for RRSPs. Some provinces even provide cash refunds from the GST credit for children 16 and over. As well, filing may allow someone with more than one job over a year to recover employment insurance premiums or Canada Pension Plan overpayments.

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