Interim Canada Dental Benefit - walkthrough

Transcript

Hello. I am Kathleen from the Canada Revenue Agency. Welcome to the walkthrough of the new interim Canada Dental Benefit. Today, I will be demonstrating the application process in the CRA’s My Account and showing you the information on Canada.ca to help you learn more about eligibility and how to get your payment quickly. 

Canadians looking to learn more about the Canada Dental Benefit can do so by searching Canada Dental Benefit on Canada.ca, where they will find the following tools and information to help them to prepare to apply. Here, Canadians can find out Who can apply, How much you can get, how to Get ready to apply, and How to apply. 

In terms of Who can apply, there is a, there’s a dynamic checklist that’s indicated here and applicants, if they want to see if they’re going to be eligible will need to select each of the different criteria and be eligible for each in order to be able to eligible (sic) to apply. 

In terms of How much you can get, there is a table that’s provided on this slide here that provides the information on a per income basis for each of the eligible children and so this is the bit of general information based on the family net income for each. Canadians can also estimate the amount for their personal benefit using—there, there’s a tool to estimate the benefit amount and so here, they can indicate information about their personal circumstance and see the amount to which they would be entitled through the tool that’s here. 

In terms of Getting (sic) ready to apply, a couple of key things to have in mind when you’re getting ready to apply, first and foremost, you have to have filed your 2021 income taxes. You and any spouse or common-law partner as well. If you have not filed your 2021 income tax return, you will be, you will be stopped in the process and you’ll need to, you’ll need to have filed it in terms of being, in ter—in order to be able to be eligible for the Canada Dental Benefit. 

Confirming that you received the Canada Child Benefit is—if you’re receiving the Canada Child Benefit, it’s a good indication that you are going to be eligible for the Canada Dental Benefit. And confirming that you have access to the CRA’s My Account, while this is not a requirement, it does facilitate the process because having access to the CRA’s My Account means that you’re going to be able to automatically be prompted with certain information and it’s going to facilitate the process. If you don’t have a My CRA Account (sic), perhaps you have a My Service Canada Account and that li—that—there is a link to the CRA’s My Account and you’ll be able to again apply online in that manner. 

We also encourage setting up direct deposit. The Canada Dental Benefit can be issued by cheque or direct deposit but direct deposit is a faster issuance of the funds and so we do encourage the direct deposit be set up prior to applying in terms of getting ready. It is the fastest way to get your payments. 

Walking through the process in terms of—it—how—How to apply would be next. 

In terms of How to apply, again, applying with the Canada Revenue Agency through the online portal is the fastest and easiest way to be able to apply. So there’s really three easy steps that people need to keep in mind. You need to get your information ready in terms of information about the children, the appointments, your employer, your spouse or common-law partners, employer. You need to actually apply, again ideally online, which is the fastest method, and then keep the dental care receipts. 

And so at this point I’ll—I think I’ll walk through what the, what the application actually looks like. If you select on Apply using my (sic) CRA Account, you will be asked to put in your user ID and password and to authenticate through and once you’ve successfully done that, you then will come to the Overview page where you have the banner here that’s going to indicate a lot of the same information that you’ve seen on the Get ready page in terms of the eligibility for being able to apply. You’ve got children under 12, your income ranges and you, you’re currently receiving the Canada Child Benefit. If, in this instance, you’re, and you’re within the s—at this point in the demo, you’re within the secure My Account portal, you’re able to begin the application process. So clicking Apply now. 

At this stage actually (ph), the system has already done some checking for you. The system has checked to see that you have filed your 2021 tax return. We have that on file, so we know that information, as well as the income, that the income is within the eligibility range and in this case, for the Canada Dental Benefit, we also see that you have children who—eligible children who are under 12 years of age. And so already, some initial checking has been done for you and had, had you not had your ’21 tax ret—return filed, we would have indicated a message to say that there were eligibility criteria you didn’t meet and that you might need to address those first. But in this case, the client has filed their return, they’re in the right income range, and they’ve got eligible children. And so again, we indicate, in terms of being able to get ready, it’s something that we have found there’s a certain comfort in knowing what’s going to be asked of you. So here we share the information we will be requesting. So anybody’s who’s looking to gather that material first before beginning an application can do so. 

Once they’re ready, they would press Start. 

The majority of applicants will have direct deposit on file already with the CRA and so that’s, that’s what we’re showing in the demo here. If the, if there was not direct deposit information, you would be seeing information about where a cheque would be mailed. In this instance, we have direct deposit information and so the client has an opportunity to validate that the information is correct, and it is where they desire that the funds would be issued. If that were not the case, that the information is not correct, they have an opportunity, since they’re in the self-service portal, to go back and make those corrections prior to putting in their application. In this instance, we’ll indicate that the information is correct and yes, this is where I would like my funds to be deposited. And we’re going to ask if the children have access to a private dental insurance. If yes, they’re not eligible to apply for the Canada Dental Benefit. If not, they are eligible and will continue on with the application. 

And so in this case, we’re going to be asking some information about the, about the employment. I, myself, am I employed or am I unemployed? If I’m employed, they’re going to ask me some information about my employer and if I’ve got a spouse, they’re similarly going to ask information about my spouse and whether or not they’re employed or unemployed and we’ll proceed. 

Now, we would ask some information about the children. So we do know the infor—we do know you have children on file would—who are under age—12 years of age. As mentioned previously, you’re receiving the Canada Child Benefit. We know the children you’re receiving it for and so we prompt with that information and here, we selected that the client would like to apply for dental benefit for two of the, their three children. They can come back at any time and apply for the third child but here, they’re applying for the first two. 

We’re going to want to know some information about those dental appointments. One is the appointment due to take place. Anywhere between October 1st and June 30th of 2023 for this first period, they can put in the information about those appointments for each of the children that they’re applying for. At this point, we’re going to click Next. 

And at this point, the in—I—we’ve—the client has entered it, the requisite information and this is what they’ve entered. And so they have an opportunity to see the sum total of what they’ve put in and they can edit and make any modifications at this time in the event that there was some sort of typo and they, they w—they’d like, they would like to correct. So they have the full set of information here that they’ve entered, each of the children, the appointment. And then they’re going to be asked to attest and acknowledge and each of these, since we really want to ensure that they understand what they’re attesting to and what they’re acknowledging, they are going to be required to check that they’ve read each of the different areas. So that the child has received or will receive services; that they’re not otherwise insured; that the information is correct; that, I understand that I’m not being reimbursed otherwise; that the CRA might contact inter—my employer to, for verification purposes; that penalties may be applied if I provided false or misleading information, and that my personal information is going to be used for administering this program. 

Once all of those areas have been selected, I can then submit the application. At this point, the client is going to receive confirmation that they were successful. They successfully submitted the application, and they have a confirmation number that they can keep for their records. They can print or save the information to have at a future date. Each of their responses that they provided is again shared back with them so that they can print that and have it for their records, as well as each of the attestation and acknowledgement areas. 

Additionally, in terms of, you know, providing information about when the funds might be received, we indicate the timelines that people can expect, which is that payments should be received within five business days if they’re signed up for direct deposit, or five to ten business days if they’re receiving a cheque by mail. And that is the dental benefit.or together.]

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