Activity 2 b: THE T1 GENERAL

Now you are ready to take a look at the simplified T1 General Form that your teacher has given you. The T1 General is the official name for your tax return. It has four pages. We will go through them one by one, looking at the lines that are likely to concern you. You will then be able to compare our simplified version with the real T1. When you do this, you will see that even though there are lots and lots of things to fill in on the T1 General, most of them won't interest you. Many of you will have a very simple tax situation. You may even be able to complete your own tax return. Of course, if you aren't confident you can do this, you can still get someone to help you. However, now you'll understand the process much better.

As you work through the simplified forms, you will sometimes see that there is a note that says "see the guide." We will go through all the pages of the T1 General form and Schedule 1, and then we can look at the guide. If you were really filling out your tax forms you would work with the forms and the guide side by side. If you wanted a bit more information about what to put on a particular line, you could look in the guide for an explanation. The guide goes through the forms line by line, so it's easy to find what you want. However, there is a lot of information that you wouldn't be interested in. Our simplified guide just contains the items we thought would be most useful to you.