# Joint non-registered investments - taxes?



## yyzvoyageur (Apr 10, 2009)

What are the rules regarding taxation on non-registered investment accounts held jointly be spouses? My wife and I have a small non-registered account that I've always treated as my income for tax purposes. She and her father also hold a joint investment account for which she's always reported the income on her tax return (as far as I know). If that account is transferred over so that it's joint between me and my wife, does she continue to report the income as her own? What if we fold that account into our existing investment account for which I've been reporting the income?


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## Cal (Jun 17, 2009)

Pretty sure it goes by where the investment money came from.


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## Karen (Jul 24, 2010)

Cal's right - it's the source of the funds in the account that determines who pays the tax on it. When my husband was alive and his father lived with us, his investment account was in all three of our names, but since all the money in it was Dad's, he declared all the interest as his income. One of our own accounts (mine and my husband's), was funded approximately equally by the two of us, so we split the interest income between us at tax time. And I had a separate account that I had before I met my husband that I had added his name to, but since it was all my money originally, I paid all the tax on it. (All of these accounts were invested in GICs.)


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## yyzvoyageur (Apr 10, 2009)

Interesting stuff! In our case my wife has a joint investment account with a recently deceased parent. We'll be switching that over so that it's joint between the two of us. So I suppose she would have to declare any income from that account on her tax return. If we started adding more money to the account I guess that could change things. Determining the source of the money seems kind of subjective to me especially when a couple have a joint bank account into which both partners' pay cheques are deposited.


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## Karen (Jul 24, 2010)

Our US/Canada tax specialist told us that Canada Revenue is very reasonable about the point you make, yyzvoyageur. He said that he had never once seen CRA challenge the couple's claim as to who had paid what into the account. His advice was to just keep the division reasonable, and there shouldn't be any problem. We just went with 50/50, and it was never questioned.


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## yyzvoyageur (Apr 10, 2009)

Karen said:


> Our US/Canada tax specialist told us that Canada Revenue is very reasonable about the point you make, yyzvoyageur. He said that he had never once seen CRA challenge the couple's claim as to who had paid what into the account. His advice was to just keep the division reasonable, and there shouldn't be any problem. We just went with 50/50, and it was never questioned.


How does that work in practice? Would I just take the numbers on the various tax slips and divide each by two, then attach the slips to both returns?


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## Karen (Jul 24, 2010)

That's what I did. I attached a post-it note to each T5, with a note showing the amount to be claimed by each of us, then showed the total, which matched the total amount shown on the T5.

It might be too late to do this, but If I were you, I would keep the account your wife had with her father separate rather than merge it with your other GICs. You could still add your name to it, but keeping it separate would make it easier to keep track of the interest on that account, since the interest from it would be attributable to her on an ongoing basis.


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## stardancer (Apr 26, 2009)

Karen said:


> That's what I did. I attached a post-it note to each T5, with a note showing the amount to be claimed by each of us, then showed the total, which matched the total amount shown on the T5.


I have written right on the T5 how the interest is split (back when I sent paper returns). I have also written on one and made photocopies when my hand was too sore to write out too many.


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