请问什末情况可申请daycare的subsidy?

[yuqi]

请问什末情况可申请政府的daycare的subsidy?谢谢！

[kliu]

http://www.toronto.ca/children/subsidy.htm

Basically, you need to be either working or in school, have very few assets (money or house or car), and earn very low income.

[yuqi]

Thank you very much.

作者: kliu

http://www.toronto.ca/children/subsidy.htm

Basically, you need to be either working or in school, have very few assets (money or house or ...

[yuqi]

we have $50000 annual income, a used car, rent a apartment, preparing to buy a house, i'm preparing to attend a professional training program, is it possible?

[kliu]

If you don't have a house yet, just buy one before applying because the primary resident and any RRSP, RESP are "NOT" counted towards your assets.

So, move your money to RRSP and RESP, and if your car worths a lot, then sell it to lease one, so it's not your asset. You cannot have more than $5000 assets in total.

Then, your household income has to be very low. If you have bursaries or scholarship or OSAP, they will also be counted towards your income, so even if you don't work, you can still be considered a high income full time student.

Then if you lease your car, pay for mortgage and tuitions, these will be all counted as expense, and they will be deducted from your income, so less income and more expense will be better.

You can call 416-392-KIDS (5437) to make an assessment to see if you are eligible.

[yuqi]

Thank you very much.

May i ask what are the bursaries and OSAP?

[求教]

作者: yuqi

Thank you very much.

May i ask what are the bursaries and OSAP?

You don't need care about these if you don't plan to be a full time student to go to school,college or university.

[扑通]

要骗政府福利的请不要跑出来大声说，也不要跟别人说自己是中国人。

[kliu]

作者: 扑通

要骗政府福利的请不要跑出来大声说，也不要跟别人说自己是中国人。

You don't need to be angry because it's not cheating. You just rearrange your finance to fit their requirements and you will report everything in truth to the government and let them do an assessment to determine your eligibility.

For example, a family has $10k in bank but nothing in RRSP is ineligible. However, if this family moves $5k to RRSP and leaves $5k in bank, they will become eligible. Another family who has a $40k car and rent an house is ineligible, but if they lease the car and put that $40k towards the downpayment of the house, they will become eligible.

The local government web site stated clearly of these requirements:
http://www.toronto.ca/children/subsidy.htm

1)less than $5000 assets
2)primary residence, RESP, RRSP do "not" count towards assets
3)very low income
4)high basic expense.

Out of curiosity, I called the local subsidy hotline to ask for more info some months ago, and guess what, they also suggested some methods to rearrange the finance to get closer to meet these requirements.

Just a side note, if your previous years' income were high and you have some RRSP quota, before you buy the primary resident, you should put the money to RRSP first to defer the income tax. Then, when you buy your first primary resident, you can take the money out from RRSP without any penalty to pay for the down payment of the house.

Also there's a ceiling on the amount of monthly household expense to be deducted from income.

However, in my own opinion, leaving only $5k assets behind is quite risky when you have a family with children and a new house. There are alot of house maintenance costs every now and then that you have to bear in mind (ie. leaking basement, leaking roof, broken furnace, broken appliances, and they all cost like thousands). You might want to think about if it's really worth it to do so in order to get that several hundred bucks subsidy a month. A salon woman who receives subsidy told me that in her case, it is worth it since her husband has low income, her income isn't stable, and she has 3 kids going to daycare.


Another side note. If you don't think the subsidy will work for you coz you and your spouse both have good income, the federal government's daycare tax deduction works very well too. You can deduct $7000/year as daycare expense on your income tax return, and for me (lower income spouse), that's a 50% discount on the daycare expense = $300/month saving in income tax. This way, you will save the hassle to apply for the subsidy. But remember to request for a receipt from your daycare provider, and if it's not a licensed daycare, make sure you ask for the caregiver's SIN number on the receipt.

Be a smart Canadian taxpayer

[yuqi]

Thank you very much Kliu, it's very kind of you to spend time in telling me so much.