TurboTax Users Blindsided by CRA Audits and Unexpected Bills
Let me tell you about something that's been unfolding here in Ontario that’s left a lot of people shocked, stressed, and scrambling for answers. It’s all about TurboTax—the tax software that so many of us have used for years without ever questioning its calculations. Well, some longtime users just got hit with a financial nightmare.
Out of the blue, hundreds of Ontarians who filed their taxes using TurboTax started receiving letters from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). These weren't just routine notices—they were audit results stating that they owed thousands of dollars due to ineligible tax credits they’d received in past years. We're talking serious money. One teacher in Markham, Cheryl Wong, said she suddenly owed $10,000, most of it due to a childcare credit that the CRA says she shouldn’t have received. Another user from Pickering and her husband were slapped with a bill for over $21,000. That's not a typo—twenty-one thousand dollars. They had to pull money from their kids’ education savings just to pay it off.
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All of these cases tie back to the Ontario Childcare Access and Relief from Expenses (CARE) tax credit—a program introduced during the pandemic. It was meant to help families with kids by covering up to 75% of their eligible childcare expenses. Sounds great, right? The issue is that TurboTax apparently miscalculated who actually qualifies, especially when users filed jointly and the software focused only on the lower earner's income instead of factoring in household income. If your family earned more than $150,000, you weren't supposed to get that credit. But many people did—thanks to how the software handled the forms.
Here’s what’s even more frustrating: the users say they followed all the prompts and entered accurate information. TurboTax, however, is washing its hands of the whole thing, saying the software works just fine and that users are responsible for checking their own inputs. Their stance is that the CRA certified their software and that any error is essentially user-based.
Now, this is where people are really getting upset. TurboTax promotes a bold guarantee—that if you get penalized due to a calculation error, they’ll cover it. But when folks like Tim O’Shea, whose daughter was reassessed for three years and now owes over $17,000, tried to claim that guarantee, TurboTax only offered a refund for the software itself. Not for the penalties. Not for the interest. Not for the stress.
There’s a Facebook group now with over 100 affected users, all telling similar stories. Many have tried to reach TurboTax for resolution but were met with vague responses and no real accountability. Meanwhile, the CRA hasn't clarified how many people have been audited so far, but the number seems to be growing.
At the end of the day, this isn’t just a software glitch—it’s a trust issue. People relied on TurboTax to help them stay compliant, not get caught in a financial mess years later. Now, many of them are calling for the company to own up, honor its guarantees, and make things right. Because when you're dealing with something as sensitive as personal finances, a mistake like this isn’t just inconvenient—it can be life-altering.
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