2020, what a year it was. And if your job was negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, chances are you received some benefit income from the government of Canada to help get you through some pretty trying times. 

These benefits were the enhanced EDI, the Canada emergency response benefit also known as the CERB, the Canada recovery benefit also known as the CRB, the Canada recovery sickness benefit and the candidate recovery caregiving benefit. 

Now all of these benefits are considered taxable income in the year in which they are received. So for example, if I receive $2,000 of CERB in 2020, I need to report that income on my 2020 taxes. Now, in order to help you report these on your taxes, you're going to receive from the government, a tea slip, and that tea slip is going to summarize how much money you received in 2020 and how much tax you paid or withheld on these benefit incomes. 

Now you'll look for either a <inaudible> or a T4 East slip. The difference is basically just who you applied for the benefits with applying through CRA you'll likely receive <inaudible> or applying through service Canada, you'll likely receive 84 E the best way to find these on cloud tax is using the search functionality and just typing in T4 or T4 E and cloud tax will take you right to that spot, where you need to go on the T4 E and the <inaudible>. 

It'll tell you how much money you received in that benefit income and how much tax you already withheld. Once you enter in that information, cloud tax will automatically put that into your taxes and calculate how much tax you might owe based on the benefit income that you've received. This all depends on how much other income you've received in the year and what your tax bracket is compared to how much tax you've already paid in 2020. 

Now for a brief summary of the recovery benefits, the first benefit we saw in response to the whole COVID pandemic was the SERP, the Canada emergency response benefit. And that was $2,000 every month. No taxes were withheld either on this benefit income. That's why you might remember hearing a lot of people saying, be careful about the amount of tax that you might owe, because you've received the full amount in benefit income to check out the eligibility requirements of the CERB. 

I suggest you go online to the Canada website for more details, but basically if you lost your job or significantly lost working hours as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and did not qualify for employment insurance, you probably qualified for CERB. Again, this $2,000 is going to be taxable on your tax return. The next was the Canada recovery benefit. This was very similar to the CERB. This was for people who didn't qualify for EDI, but yet we're still facing tough times in the job market because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This amount was $500 per week, but there was a 10% tax withholding this time. So the CRB was every two weeks, which means you received $1,000 at a time, but with a 10% withholding, instead of receiving $1,000, you received $900, 10%, like I said, or $100 of that benefit income was withheld for your taxes. The Canada sickness benefit and the Canada caregiving benefit were very similar as the amounts were the exact same, except the eligibility was different. As a high level, the sickness benefit was available for those who had to stay home because they were sick or in quarantine due to COVID. The caregiving benefit was available for those who had to stay home because they were looking after someone who was sick, or maybe they had to look after a young child because the daycares were closed. Again, if you want more information on these recovery benefits and the eligibility, I suggest you go check out the Canada website for more information, the recovery benefit, the sickness benefit and the caregiving benefit are all available into 2021. So if you believe that you're eligible, I suggest you look into that 2020 definitely had its challenges, but hopefully filing your 2020 taxes. Isn't another challenge on top of that, thanks to the simplicity of cloud tax software. Again, take a look at your T slips, your T4A and your T4 E for your recovery benefits, report that on your tax return. And you'll be set. Hopefully this was a value to you. Thanks for watching and happy taxing.COVID-19 Benefits - Interest and Repayment Relief

Interest and Repayment Update: 

On February 9, 2021 the government announced certain measures relief measures:

• Self-employed individuals whose net self-employment income was less than $5,000 and who applied for the CERB will not be required to repay the CERB, as long as their gross self-employment income was at