Tax season is upon us.
If you haven’t filed yours already, you may wish to take a gander at our story this week providing some tips on areas you can claim to reduce your burden.
Revenue Canada is being proactive this year — the agency reached out to Inuvik Drum specifically to talk about tax credits tailored to Northerners, as well as to ensure people are aware of the latest scams.
While we were speaking, I pressed their spokesperson on credits other than the better known Northern ones — that being the Northern residency and travel tax credits — that could benefit Northerners, notably expenses incurred by home-based businesses, of which there are many here in Inuvik and I suspect across the NWT. These types of operations are likely on the rise in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has made working from home considerably more desirable and accessible.
A tenacious taxpayer can find a lot of loopholes to reduce their bill or increase their return, if they’re organized throughout the year and keep receipts. Fuel costs for work and business can be claimed. Supplies for work and business can be claimed. Heck, if your businesses loses money, regardless of whether it’s something outside your control like climate change or a pandemic or you just happen to be lousy at running a company, you can claim that. You can also claim moving expenses, union dues, art supplies — members of the clergy can even claim their residence costs.
You can claim up to 75 per cent of your income in charitable donations. You can even submit for up to $675 for a donation of $1,200 or more to a political party or politician — because, of course, they don’t have enough money already.
There’s even a tax credit for journalists belonging to a registered media organization, something I wish I knew two weeks ago when I filed my tax return.
One area that’s notably absent, particularly when you talk about Northerners and their lifestyles compared to the rest of the country, is harvesting expenses. Ottawa could really help a lot of Northerners by offering a tax credit for expenses incurred related to hunting and gathering off the land.
In most of Canada, hunting amounts to a hobby — one largely limited to the upper-middle classes who can afford the deep freeze, a versatile truck and the firepower needed to bring something down and eat it. Here in the North, it’s the lifeline for communities — an expensive lifeline.
An absence of roads means hunters must rely on smaller vehicles like snowmobiles and ATVs to get to where the quarry is. A hunting excursion can last several days or longer, so that requires heating fuel, food and water during the trip, along with other basic needs. Beluga harvesting camps are basically temporary mini-communities where people travel by boat to specific locations and stay there for extended periods. Even picking berries requires a significant amount of travel to do properly. All this to bring food to your family and neighbours’ tables.
This is all fuelled by money coming out of Northerners‘ pockets to maintain their traditional lifestyle. If this was elsewhere in the country, you could bet there would be an effort to make it tax exempt in some way. You wouldn’t know it from listening to them complain, but farmers, for example, can claim a chunk of their fuel costs. Why not hunters in a prescribed zone? They’re basically doing the same thing, i.e. feeding the community. Most, if not all, hunters we profile in Inuvik Drum share their harvest with those unable to hunt on their own — this is not a selfish act of machismo or sport, this is a public service.
Canada should introduce a Northern harvesting benefit and allow hunters and gatherers to recoup their expenses. With climate change disrupting supply chains and driving up the cost of living, which is further amplified by our infrastructure deficit here in the North, maintaining the status quo is becoming increasingly difficult. Presenting Northerners with an additional way to continue their lifestyle without breaking the bank would have far-reaching benefits.
One of the biggest benefits is that it would help keep people hunting. Making harvesting expeditions more affordable means more people will go on them, which means more young people on the land instead of on the streets. That translates into greater food security for communities, especially if they can reinvest the saved income into other infrastructure. It could also help counter the trend of addictions in the North by giving more opportunities for young Northerners to connect with their culture and learning a valuable skill to help them contribute to their community.
And these benefits could manifest themselves fairly quickly. As previously mentioned in this space, since the carbon tax came into force in 2019, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions have dropped eight per cent — that’s in five years. In spite of all the bellyaching from people who can’t be bothered to turn off their vehicles when not in motion, it is actually accomplishing its intended purpose.
So let’s apply that same logic in the opposite direction for hunting. We’ll not only save our harvesters money, we could be giving our young adults a means to self-actualization and helping to preserve Northern culture.