Information given on tax return vs information on common law spousal application

[Christopholus]

Hey guys,

I'm hoping you can help with a question I have about an application I'm about to make for residency. I'm in a common law relationship and making in-canada family class application.

The difficult part to fill in is the date entered into the relationship.
For the purpose of my 2012 tax return, the first we filed as a couple, I gave the date of change of marital status as the first day of 2012 to make doing taxes simple. However, our relationship would have become common-law before that date, and some of the supporting documents we plan on using are from before then. Would a discrepancy between what we said when we filed our taxes and what we put on our application be noticed, and would it have an effect on the application?
I imagine the only CRA information used by the CIC during the application is the Option-C print out, and I would assume that information from the CRA isn't readily available, or they wouldn't ask for the Option-C.

Does any one have any thoughts on this...?

Thanks very much for any help.

 

[Christopholus]

Or with a slightly different approach;
Would evidence of the relationship (ie, leases, photos, etc) from before the "date entered into the relationship" stated on the application be taken into consideration?

 

[Rob_TO]

Your Option C printout will just show common-law status for 2012 as common-law, and you were actually common-law in 2012, so based on that I don't think it would matter to CIC. However I have no idea if CIC ever pulls old CRA tax records, but if they ever found out you filed as single in 2011 when you are trying to now claim you were common-law, that could be an issue (though I doubt they would do this).

However it could matter to the CRA. If you actually became common-law so reached your 12th month of living together in 2011, then you were supposed to file as common-law in 2011. To file as single in 2011 when you were in fact common-law, was tax fraud. In case the CRA ever audited you, and they inquired about when you actually become common-law, this could be an issue.

You are supposed to change your status with CRA from single to common-law in the month you became officially common-law. As long as this was on or before Dec 31 of a certain year, for that tax year you would file as common-law. CRA would calculate benefits/credits (such as GST rebate, etc) based on the MONTH you became common-law. So one could be getting GST rebates as single for part of a year, and then if status changed to common-law and new family income didn't qualify them for rebates anymore, CRA would stop them as of that month.

 

[Christopholus]

That all makes sense, thanks very much for your help Rob.