I’m sure nearly everyone is aware of the Home Renovation Tax Credit (HRTC), especially as it’s recently been heavily featured in ads in the media. (You can find the TV ads here.)
The premise of the program is to help stimulate consumer spending by offering a tax credit of up to $1350 to people who perform home renovations. The credit is 15% of your renovation costs, after the first $1000, up to a maximum $10,000. That is, to get the maximum rebate, you must spend $10,000 in home renovations.
E.g. ($10,000 – $1000) x 15% = $1350 rebate
You can visit the Canada Revenue Agency’s HRTC site to get more details, like eligibility to claim the credit, calculating your credit, and how to claim the credit.
However, there’s a hitch.
The HRTC hasn’t yet been approved in Parliament. It was introduced in the 2009 federal budget this past January, but has yet to be introduced as a bill to be approved. Some people are alleging that its hold up is becoming a political ploy for the government to prevent the opposition from triggering an election this fall for fear they’d be crucified in the court of public opinion (despite the fact they supported it in the budget). Unfortunately, the public is in the middle of it being held hostage: especially those who’ve only made renovations based solely on the fact they’ll qualify for the credit.
Hopefully it just gets resolved quickly, to the benefit of consumers.
I had heard of this, but wow!! It’s pretty crazy that you have to spend $10,000 to get a tax credit of $1350! It really doesn’t sound worth it to me, particularly because it hasn’t been passed in parliment!
I guess the rationale was to give more incentive to people who were considering renovations anyway.
But it is concerning it’s not yet official, despite all the media exposure.