Cara Noble

A joint account issues tax slips with the SIN of the first/primary account holder on the tax slips. Just because the slip has the primary account holder’s SIN, it doesn’t necessarily mean they should report all of the income on their tax return. The slip will show beneficiary code = 2… that tells CRA it’s a joint account, so all the income may not be reported on the tax return of the person who’s SIN is on the slip. Just because it’s a joint account, that doesn’t mean that the couple can each report 50% of the income on their respective tax returns. Instead, Canadian tax rules state that the person who first earned the money to deposit into the investment account, should be the one who should report the investment income earned on those dollars. So, joint accounts might be taxed all to one spouse, or all to the other, or 50/50, or 10/90, or 25/75. There’s no one size fits all. It depends on the history of who saved the money in the first place.