As you may or may not know, I wear a few hats these days. I coach, write, and I am an active essential caregiver for my parents. I am now also heading up our Family Council at their long term care home, so from time to time, I may write articles of interest for family caregivers. This is one such article.
I don’t know if you are like me, but I get a little overwhelmed thinking about filling out forms. It seems everywhere I turn, someone is wanting me to fill out a form. Many more forms materialized over the last few years when my sister and I enacted our power of attorney status, and helped transition our parents into long term care. Unfortunately through it all, I developed a huge dislike of filling out forms, but procrastinating is not very effective in moving life forward!
Five years ago, yup, five YEARS ago, our accountant advised us to apply for the Canadian federal Disability Tax Credit for my dad, and she thought my mom might qualify as well. At the time, I took a quick look at the site, thought, “way too much work”, and ignored it. When I finally explored the idea again , I discovered a few things. The form is long. It is 16 pages, although when I actually started filling it out, I realized the family section was only the first page. The rest is up to the health care provider to fill out. There is also an online version which would be faster to complete.
I had to figure out who to ask to fill it out, and get over my reluctance to find the health care professional who could best answer the questions and do this much work. Then I wondered if my parent(s) would really qualify? Were they considered disabled enough? Did their income or savings come into the picture? Finally, I took the plunge last year and applied for my Dad. Not only did he qualify for that current tax year and will qualify for every year moving forward, but the extent of his disability meant he got a tidy sum back from the government retroactively dated to 2020!
It was totally worth the couple of hours it took me to fill out the family section, (which is just one page), to ask one of his doctors to fill it out, (and pay the small fee), and to mail it in. There is no income criteria. It is based on the amount of impairment in activities of daily living, which might result from a major diagnosis, or a combination of health issues. Dad’s was relatively easy. He had a total, non-reversible major impairment. The doctor who originally diagnosed it filled out the form. Now we are working on my mom’s DTC.
I wondered how Mom’s doctor in long term care could fill out the form since she didn’t know her before she entered the LTC home. Mom’s health decline had been more gradual, with diagnoses acquired along the way. The way it worked is that the doctor asked me, who had been my mom’s primary caregiver prior to entering care, questions about her medical diagnoses, activities of daily living and cognition, and the years her impairments had started. She spent about 45 minutes on the phone with me taking careful notes. We haven’t received Mom’s notice of the DTC yet, but we are expecting it soon. Her doctor told me that they have never turned down a DTC form that she has written for a patient.
The ability to apply the disability tax credit to Dad’s income tax, and, we hope soon to Mom’s, means that they pay less income tax yearly which frees up more money for their care. For those who hate forms as much as I do, this is one form that I wished I had filled out years ago. Thankfully my parents can benefit from it now. It is not only seniors that can benefit from this tax credit, but anyone over the age of 18 who meets the criteria. This is not a benefit that is well known, and it may not be something that the person needing it is capable of applying for on their own, (or even thinks they qualify for). They do not need to be living in long term care in order to qualify for it. Here’s the link so that you can learn more about it: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/segments/tax-credits-deductions-persons-disabilities/disability-tax-credit.html