Monday, February 23, 2009

Canada Child Tax and Universal Child Care Benefit and others

We have just received notice about all the tax and child care benefits we applied for back in November. Yes, it took that long to be processed. For the Universal Child Care benefit, $100 is paid per month to all parents for each child under 6 years of age.  Every parent gets this, regardless of their income.  For the Canada Child Tax benefit, we didn't qualify for much since it's computed based on your family income.  We didn't qualify for any BC Family Bonus either.

While I'm on the subject of applications and forms, I'm a bit surprised some of them took so long to be processed.  Perhaps it is normal or maybe they were delayed due to the winter holidays??  Whatever the reason, we have finally gotten all our responses today.  When we were about to leave Burnaby General Hospital with our new baby, we were given a package of forms.  The Child Tax and Child Care benefits were among them.  Also included were the form for registering the baby's birth and ordering a birth certificate, which had the option for also requesting the baby's social insurance number (SIN), and the health form for his Care card through the Medical Services Plan (MSP).  The baby's birth certificate came in just one week (probably since it was optional and you have to pay for it), followed by the SIN card soon after.  The Care card took like 2 months.  When you call about it, the recorded message actually tells you that it takes around 8 weeks.  In the time being, the baby is covered under the mother's card.

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