Anyone who thinks CRA will accept paperless is ...less

I'm going to say it.  It's April 29 and I deserve to rant.  The word is clueless.

As in missing the necessary clues to ensure that everything is filed.
As in missing the clues that prove that the income being reported is all the income there is
As in missing the clues that provide tax preparers with the clues that there are more medical expenses than those in the file... as in the dental receipts are missing, and the surgery for cataracts... yada yada...

Financial transactions, as in bank statements, Credit card statements, investment statements, registered account statements, those are how tax preparers figure out what you're not telling them because you are clueless about how many deductions and credits there are that you could claim if you only knew what was in the Income Tax Act.

Someone last week was amazed when I recommended reading the RC4064 and said no one will read a CRA publication.

Well, if you aren't going to read all the CRA publications, then you have to let me read your financial transactions reports instead. There is no other way.

Get over it. I don't care where you shopped and how much junk you bought, but I do care that the deposits equal what you are declaring as revenue. If I don't care, when you're audited, CRA will care. And you are guilty until proven innocent.

That painting or jewellery including all that gold you sold last year, that's proceeds on disposition, and there are rules about reporting your gains on the sale of those items.

If you think that because you don't have those statements, CRA won't be able to look at them, think again. They can and will demand to see your financial transactions.

So, you may as well produce them, and keep them with your records, for 7 years. CRA isn't going paperless any time soon. They may have electronic record keeping rules, but if you read those rules carefully, the requirements are meant for high tech situations where people have sufficient systems and software to maintain those records in readable form years from now. Not likely when you're trading up to new computers every year.

These days one does wonder, what lasts longer, your computer or your underwear?