Well, here it is – last day of February. Spring is next month, spring training is already almost a week old and we have all turned a collective corner towards longer days, warmer temperatures and (hopefully) sunnier skies.
 
Now, not to go all “Debbie Downer” on you, but it’s also the time when we start hunkering down and thinking about doing our taxes. It’s not as big a deal in our house as it used to be (like when I had an income!), when I’d watch Rob hunched over piles of receipts, working late into the night trying to make everything work out just right and hopefully, HOPEFULLY get us a bit of our money back from the federal government. Now, of course, we do everything online and since we have a company, things are filed quarterly. And there are computer programs. It’s much less of a hassle – which, of course, is easy for me to say. 
 
But I got something the other day that made me think, Uh-oh…I sure hope this doesn’t catch anyone. It was a scam email (all you have to do is hover your cursor over the return address and look in the bottom left corner of your screen to see from whom this email is actually coming). It was some guy with a New Zealand suffix in his address – Alan Miles or some bogus name – and it was just official enough to look legit if someone you know tends to be instantly alarmed or excited by emails that look as if they’re coming from the government. 
 

 
As CRA tells us again and again, they will not send email with a link and ask you to divulge personal or financial information. They won’t ask for personal information of ANY kind by email or text message and they don’t ask for payments by prepaid credit cards. And they remind us never to provide personal information through the internet or via email. Here’s a link to the CRA page about scams.
 
I know you’re savvy enough not to get taken in by these crooks, but if there’s someone in your life who might not be as sharp as you are and who has access to the internet (I’m thinking especially of elderly parents, or friends who repeatedly post or send you the bogus warnings that say “send this to everyone you know”) then please make them aware that these CRA wannabes are at it again. Actually, it never ends. But with the tax season just about upon us, it never hurts to remind those you love to save them a lot of heartache later on.
 
Take care. Tomorrow, we’re starting March on an uplifting note with a beautiful new website you’re going to want to check out.