The Disability Tax Credit with Christine Brunsden | E103

Helping Canadians with health impairments.

On today's episode, Jason is going to talk to Christine Brunsden, CEO of Benefits2, a web-based application designed to help people and medical practitioners identify disabilities that qualify for the Disability Tax Credit. It also assists them by saving time and money while increasing the rate of success when applying for the Disability Tax Credit.

Episode Highlights

  • 01:06: Christine's daughter has got some severe disabilities. She was not progressing in her learning. By the end of grade one, they found, that she was not even reading at a kindergarten level.

  • 02:56: Through her teenage years, Christine's daughter went downhill, and she ended up going through some really terrible stuff.

  • 03:52: Christine realized how hard it is for young people who are aging out of the system, they don't have the proper support.

  • 05:44: Medical practitioners are burning out record numbers. They are not motivated to take their after-hours to fill out third party forms for the government

  • 05:59: The tax credit promoters, they recognized the difficulty of filling third party forms a long time ago and put these services out or they are charging anywhere from 20 to 40% of people's refunds to help them get this and people pay it because they have had such a hard time in accessing this.

  • 07:31: People don't even look at disabilities, taking continence is one of those big things. Nobody wants to start talking about that and they don't know that it qualifies.

  • 09:41: Christine shares an example of a woman who did her disability tax credit with Benefits 2 on January 31st.

  • 11:09: The hard part for everyone involved in tax refund is that nobody has ever taught anything about this in school.

  • 12:02: Christine explains how her platform helps people qualify for disability tax.

  • 12:45: The government tried to bring in the disability tax motors restrictions act and fix the fee at $100. 

  • 15:17: There are specific ways to say things, and when you have gone through thousands of applications and you have had thousands of phone calls, you learn how to say things that make this as easy as possible.

  • 16:03: Christine says that they are already burnt out and they wanted to give medical practitioners as much time back into their day as possible to do the things that they love. 

  • 17:08: Christine thought the disability tax credit promoters were really predatory in nature, taking that big percentage.

  • 18:09: The persons operating in each province are regulated provincially, so they are saying, well, federal government can't fix our provincially regulated fees, so it failed on that basis.

  • 19:10: Christine is a huge advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion, and he is also a huge advocate for people with disabilities.

  • 22:01: Imagine that we could have a place where companies can come and get their calendars. They can deck themselves out of their merchandise, or even just people with disabilities or family members could come and create merchandise around this.

  • 24:18: The Canada Caregiver credit, medical expenses, and disability supports deductions home buyer's amount.

  • 25:09: 60% of all people who have the disability tax credit are over the age of 55, and the RDSP is not even a benefit for that.

  • 26:22: It's not a disability tax credit. It's really an enabling for people with ordinary everyday impairment to their activities of daily living.

  • 26:52: Christine certainly did not have the right team, and it was the biggest challenge to find the right team of people to bring in and the right senior software engineer.

3 Key Points

  1. Christine shares her daughter's ordeal and how her teacher called her out in front of all of her peers at the age of 6.

  2. Christine developed Benefits2 to leave more money in the hands of persons with disabilities and their supporting family members and to ensure Canadians have an option that complies with the disability tax credit promoters restrictions act.

  3. Christine explains how they created a platform, a complex algorithm in the background that once you have answered your questions related to your particular impairment, they write the application for success for you, you get a code and the PDF of the application and e-mail.

Tweetable Quotes

  • "My eyes are really wide open around the disability taxpayer." - Christine Brunsden

  • "If we look at what happens with incontinence, well, somebody who suffers from incontinence is likely going to impair on their physical activity because of the whole leakage issue. They are probably not hydrating properly because of the leakage issue and that they will basically cause some other sort of disabling condition." - Christine Brunsden

  • "If the credit doesn't apply to you, maybe you're not working, but maybe you have a supporting family member, and you can transfer the credits to that supporting family member." - Christine Brunsden

  • "Our marketplace will have diversity, equity inclusion, calendars that support all the different awareness dates throughout the country and internationally." - Christine Brunsden

Resources Mentioned

FPCBOJason PereiraFinancial Planning