When I enter $498 under "Tradesperson's Tools Expense" on the "Other Employment Expenses" TurboTax form, my expected tax refund does not budge. Am I missing something?

[srwpractice]

I do have a T2200 from my employer and I'm quite sure it should result in a larger refund.

[TurboTaxSusan]

Are you using TurboTax CD/Download or TurboTax Online?

[srwpractice]

Hi TurboTaxSusan,

I am using the TurboTax Online version.

And, in anticipation of some potential follow-up questions:

- I know there are some calculations of income vs. amount being claimed. My employment income (from the employer that provided the T2200) is over $50,000 with the typical tax, CPP and EI deductions. Nothing fancy or strangely high or strangely low.

- I am not an apprentice so did not receive any apprenticeship grants.

- I am entering the tool cost in the GST column (not the HST column or the third column, which I forget)

- All of the other employment expenses on the form seem to be working as expected.

I have used TurboTax Online for many years and this feels like the kind of entry that should increase the expected refund (or reduce the taxes payable) but it is having no effect at all.

Thanks in advance. I hope you or somebody else can help.

[TurboTaxSusan]

Please contact our phone support team at 1-888-829-8608 as they will be better able to assist you. They will be open tomorrow at 9 AM.

[srwpractice · Accepted solution]

I have resolved this question now so I am posting the details here in case anybody else has the same problem and refers to this.

1. Calling the Support Number is easier said than done. It starts with the usual automated nonsense where it insists on texting or emailing me some information, which in turn is only telling me how to contact Support. There is no obvious option to speak with a human After calling back again, I figured out that saying "Speak to a person" or something like that allowed me to get past the automated system into a human.

2. The first human was less than helpful, claimed he was having system problems, and promised to call me back. I suspected this was malarkey but I waited a couple of hours to give him a chance to do his job. After giving up, I called again and luckily got a different human.

3. This person (Mirza) was actually professional and helped me understand the problem. It turns out that Tradesperson's Tools are only deductible once they exceed a certain value ($1368 as of this year). To confirm, I entered fake amounts greater than $1368 and could see the calculation was working fine. Since I "only" spent around $500 on tools for work this year, it looks like no tax break for me.

Here is a CRA link that explains the gory detail:

Deduction for tools (tradespersons) - Canada.ca