I just read this Red Tape Awareness Week release from the Canadian Payroll Association and thought – hey you can easily start saving on T4’s today – without waiting for the red tape to clear!
Electronic transmission of T4’s through Self-Service or secure e-mail has been available from some vendors for several years now. So the question is...
Why Are So Many Companies Still Printing T4's On Paper?
Let’s face it most of us don’t have time in our day for extra work. The biggest challenge is the requirement of getting an employee’s permission to provide electronic tax slips. For Payroll and HR professionals, asking an employee’s permission appears to involve a whole lot of paperwork:
- Sending out a letter of permission;
- Collecting signatures from employee’s; and,
- Tracking which employees you received forms back from and which ones you didn’t (and will still require paper forms).
The Cost of Printing T4's
If you have been printing to paper for years you may not even realize all the costs involved. Here are a few costs that you may be incurring yet hadn’t considered:
- Cost of delivering T4’s. From couriers to remote locations, mailing out to terminated employees and the time spent to hand them out internally- it all adds up.
- Cost of pressure sealed forms and specialty printers required for these forms
- Cost of your time and supplies if you have to manually put the T4’s in envelopes for distribution
- Cost of time to reprint and reissue T4’s when employees lose them
The reality is modernized Canadian Payroll solution providers have solved this problem for their clients by automating the permission process.
Let me explain to you how we here at Avanti have made this process efficient and administration free by using our Self-Service as an example.
In Self-Service, the first time an employee logs in they are automatically asked if they will agree to receive their T4 (or other tax slips) electronically. Their response is recorded as follows:
Employee Agrees
Automatically flagged on their profile and tax slips will be generated electronically
Employee Disagrees
The 16% referred to in the CPA article are automatically flagged on their profile and a paper copy will be produced
No Computer Access
For those employees without access to computers, they will not have the opportunity to use Self-Service and will default to receiving a paper statement until such time they can access Self-Service.
Best of all, the employee will always have access to their current and previous T4’s by simply accessing their Self-Service portal. They no longer need to call you or your Payroll team to re-print them.
It Really Can Be That Easy
With the right solution you can start saving your estimated $5 per employee now instead of waiting for the legislation to change.
Although we are often tempted to wait for the red tape to clear before implementing changes, a good software partner will have solutions long before the red tape clears to help you take advantage of technology without adding extra workload.
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