When a P.E.I. woman got a letter asking for taxes on money she hadn't earned, she thought she was being scammed.
"When I opened it, I thought it was a scam printed on [Canada Revenue Agency] paper, because I know there have been scams, so I didn't pay too much attention to it," Mary Mullen, a French Village resident, told CBC.
Mullen is an instructor at a post-secondary institution and has retired from another job.
She showed the letter to her son and daughter and they told her to check with CRA.
Canada's tax-collecting agency told Mullen the letter was in fact real, and that the government can require people to pay tax instalments in advance of actually earning money if they owed more than $3,000 that year (or $1,800 for Quebec residents).
"I was very shocked. I kept telling them this is income I haven't totally earned yet," Mullen said.
While most Canadians file their income tax returns in the spring for the previous year, this year, some 1.8 million people got a "reminder" that they may have to pay a chunk of 2020's bill this year.
"I've always paid my taxes on time, before they were due, and in the full amount," said Mullen, who retired from one job but still works. "I could maybe understand [it] had I been delinquent in taxes for the last number of years and they wanted some assurance they would get taxes."
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