Meet the 8-year-old giving tax-filing tips to adults

Carlie Weinreb, 8, offers income tax tips, on CTV News Channel, on Friday, March 4, 2016.

Carlie Weinreb is only eight years old, but she’s already offering adults lessons in how to fill out their dreaded tax returns.

Weinreb told CTV News Channel that she started learning about taxes when she was five years old, with help from her Chartered Accountant father.

At a recent tax seminar at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Weireb used a whiteboard to show a group of adults how to calculate what they owe.

She broke it down into federal taxes, provincial taxes and the Ontario Health Premium, a surcharge of up to $900 paid by anyone in the province making more than $20,000 per year.

A seemingly confused audience member said he thought that health care costs were completely covered by provincial taxes.

“That’s a myth,” Weinreb replied.

Weinreb said her biggest tip for 2016 is that that those making up to $45,000, “are indifferent,” whereas those making between $45,000 and $90,000, “are happy” and those making more than $200,000 might be “sad.”

That’s because the Liberals cut taxes on the middle portion of income (from 22 per cent to 20.5 per cent) while raising the top tax rate from 29 per cent to 33 per cent.

Carlie’s next workshop scheduled for March 16 at Western University in London, Ont.

She said that if she gets paid, she intends to donate her earnings to a children’s charity. (That’s deductible, after all.)

Although she hasn’t yet decided what she wants to be when she grows up, Weinreb told CTV News Channel she hopes it will have something to do with math.