The New Year's holiday is always bittersweet for municipal finance department staff. Holiday cheer and
family events, followed closely and harshly by the beginning of year-end season. However, it's particularly tough on our colleagues from the province of Ontario (unless you are like the City of Mississauga), which has the biggest set of provincial ministry reporting in the country .
And sure enough today I loaded up the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing website and the 2015 Financial Information Return is there waiting for us to download and get started.
The Ministry says the 2015 changes have been "minimal," but there are some interesting and important items for you to be aware of.
What about those changes we've heard about?
One of the changes with the 2015 Ontario FIR that immediately grabbed my attention is that the Ministry now requires the nature of cash to be disclosed on Schedule 54 - whether it is restricted, unrestricted or unallocated.
Another change that may be cause for celebration for some - schedules 75A, 75B and 75C are no longer required for 2015.
Those of us lucky enough to have attended the 2015 MFOA conference in Blue Mountain, Ontario heard lots of interesting FIR news from Jim Simos, the Coordinator of the Financial Information Return for the Municipal Finance Policy Branch of the MMAH.
2015 is the Ministry's pilot year for a revamped submission process. About 15 Ontario municipalities will be participating. Don't worry - Jim and the MMAH have already contacted the participants in the pilot so you should already know if you're affected. We are happy to announce that two of our clients who have automated the Ontario FIR with CaseWare, are participating in this pilot. This will ensure that our tool is compliant with the new ministry changes.
For the other 400+ of you, it's business as usual - at least for one more year. Once the pilot is complete and any problems ironed out, get ready for a change to the way you do your 2016 return!
