Bill Gardner / Reading Your UG Cheque

Your pay stub has two main codes on it:

REGPAY: This is your GTA pay, which is taxable as salary.

REGT4A: If this has the same no. of hours as REGPAY, it also constitutes a portion of your GTA pay, but is considered as a "bursary" (like a scholarship). It is taxed in a different way, and will be reported next year on a T4A slip which you need to file with your income tax forms.

REGT4A: More of these codes represent your GRA research money, taxed in the same way as the bursary. There will be a separate line for each different source, e.g., your supervisor, department (e.g., matching funds), or college.

CPP, EI, and tax are deducted for REGPAY only, not for REGT4A items. There will be a deduction for the TA union.

Pay items are calculated as follows: The total amount payable over the entire semester (for the GTA position or GRA allowance) is divided by the number of working days in the semester (normally around 77) to give salary/day. Cheques are issued every two weeks, so the salary/day is multiplied by the number of days (1-10) that fall into that cheque period. This amount is recorded as representing a certain number of "hours" worked, but these are virtual hours for computational purposes and should not be taken seriously.

Since the beginning and ending dates of the semester will likely not align with cheque periods, your first and last cheques will be for smaller amounts. However, the total of all the cheques in a semester should sum to the amount you expect to earn from your GTA job and/or GRA allowance. If it does not, please contact me so we can straighten it out.

Since most grad students are too "poor" to end up owing any income tax at all, you can prevent the payroll department from deducting the tax in the first place. (You would get it back next year in any case, but it's better to have it in your pocket in the meantime.) The method is to go to the payroll office and fill out a form for "reducing withholding of tax at source," which says you're a full-time student. After you fill out this form, they will stop deducting tax, and your paycheque will be larger.

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