Schedule 1 - Federal Tax

Before taxpayers can fill in page 4 of the T1 General form, they have to do some work on two other forms. These are the Schedule 1 for federal tax and form ON428 for provincial tax. You also use these forms to work out your federal and provincial non-refundable tax credits.

At first, Schedule 1 looks a bit complicated. That's why we have made a simplified form for you to fill out before you try the real Schedule 1. As with the T1 General form, there are a lot of lines that probably won't interest you. We have chosen the ones we thought you would find useful. There are two main parts that are likely to be of interest to you. The first part is where you work out the federal tax due on your taxable income. The second part is where you work out what non-refundable tax credits you can claim. This will reduce the amount of federal income tax you have to pay.

First of all, we'll go through how to work out how much tax is due on your taxable income. The first thing taxpayers have to do is to enter their taxable income amount on Schedule 1. After that, they do some calculations to see how much federal income tax they should pay on this amount. The calculations they do depend on how much their taxable income is. Even if a taxpayer has no taxable income, Schedule 1 has to be filled out. A complete return is needed for the GST credit or the CCTB.

On the real Schedule 1, the taxable income section is divided into four columns for the different income amounts. To make it easier for you, we have made the four columns into four sections instead. We have taken out some of the lines and given you more space to write in. It's likely that only the first section of this part will concern you. Most people in upgrading programs - students and teachers alike - will have a taxable income of less than $31,677 (2002). The other sections are for three higher levels of taxable income: