No longer eligible for GST/Alberta Benefits - Asking to repay

[sbjuliana]

Hi a weird thing happened to me and my husband recently.

We are in Canada since 2015. First, as temporary worker/student. This year, we got our PR and a new SIN. We always file our taxes (since 2016), and we always reported ourselves as married.

We have a joint account at the bank and this year we received GST and an Alberta benefit. I received a message from the CRA saying I was eligible for those benefits. Ok so far.

But my husband got a new message saying he is no longer eligible because I'm the main applicant and asking him to pay the CRA back. They are asking him to pay the exact same amount we received for both GST and the Alberta benefit.

This does not make sense to me since our marital status didn't change. Why is the CRA asking my husband to pay something I was eligible to receive? The only thing that changed was our SIN (we created a new account and linked both SINs, old and new, to retrieve the information from previous years).

Any ideas of why this is happening and what should we do?

 

[scylla]

When you have filed your past tax returns, have you declared each other's income (e.g. has your husband declared your income in his tax return)?

 

[sbjuliana]

We always file the tax return together, we always state we are husband and wife. We never did anything different.

I assume this is a mistake from them due to the new SIN. On my husband's CRA account, it says we're married since 2015 (the year we first file our taxes). On my account, it says we're married since 2017 oO Doesn't make sense. We'll try calling CRA to understand what happened.

 

[jtolani25]

Hi a weird thing happened to me and my husband recently.

We are in Canada since 2015. First, as temporary worker/student. This year, we got our PR and a new SIN. We always file our taxes (since 2016), and we always reported ourselves as married.

We have a joint account at the bank and this year we received GST and an Alberta benefit. I received a message from the CRA saying I was eligible for those benefits. Ok so far.

But my husband got a new message saying he is no longer eligible because I'm the main applicant and asking him to pay the CRA back. They are asking him to pay the exact same amount we received for both GST and the Alberta benefit.

This does not make sense to me since our marital status didn't change. Why is the CRA asking my husband to pay something I was eligible to receive? The only thing that changed was our SIN (we created a new account and linked both SINs, old and new, to retrieve the information from previous years).

Any ideas of why this is happening and what should we do?

Hi,

Just wanted to ask what happened next as this happened to me. After changing SIN, the request came in to pay everything back?

 

[canuck78]

Hi,

Just wanted to ask what happened next as this happened to me. After changing SIN, the request came in to pay everything back?

Does you previous records show that you were married? Did you get overpayments?