The Home Heating Rebate is available to residents of the province who directly incur costs to heat their home and whose adjusted family income was $40,000 or less, regardless of the primary source of heat. For most people, adjusted family income is the net income (Line 236 of the income tax return) of the applicant plus, if applicable, the net income of that applicant’s spouse or partner. If you had a child under the age of six in 2010, adjusted income does not include net Universal Child Care Benefit payments received. If you received income from a Registered Disability Savings Plan in 2010, your adjusted income does not include the net amount of payments received from that plan. Applicants should review the amount of their reported income on their 2010 income tax return filed earlier this year with Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). Only one rebate is available per household.
Eligible households are those who have an adjusted family income of $40,000 or less for the 2010 taxation year. Regardless of the type of energy source purchased to heat the home, individuals and families will be eligible to receive a rebate of $250, where adjusted family income is less than $35,000. The rebate will be $500 for those living in Coastal Labrador communities. A partial rebate is available to households with adjusted family income for 2010 above $35,000 but less than $40,000, with a minimum rebate of $100. An invoice for fuel, electricity and/or wood must be supplied.
Eligible individuals or families must apply for the rebate. Applicants must provide an invoice for either an electricity, wood or heating fuel purchase, depending on the source of heat, for any month from September 2011 to April 2012. Only one person per household may apply for the rebate. The deadline for submitting applications is September 30, 2012. Most applications should be processed within 10 weeks of when they are received by the department. Only one rebate is available per household.
Application forms are available through the Department of Finance and the Seniors’ Resource Centre in St. John’s, throughout the province at all Department of Advanced Education and Skills offices (formerly known as Human Resources, Labour and Employment) and Service NL centres. They will also be available in local newspapers in the coming days. Applications can also be obtained online at the Department of Finance website (www.gov.nl.ca/fin/homeheating).
Since this program is based on adjusted family income, we need to verify both incomes to determine eligibility. Privacy laws require that we have a person’s expressed written consent in order to verify income.
Applications must be sent to:
For further information on the Home Heating Rebate program, please contact the Department of Finance toll-free at 1-855-223-7432 or by e-mail at homeheatprogram@gov.nl.ca.
The information on your application form will need to be verified by the Department of Finance. To do that, the Department of Finance will be accessing information from the Canada Revenue Agency to verify income. When you sign your application, you are giving the department authorization to verify this information with the Canada Revenue Agency.
We expect to receive more than 80,000 applications. All applications have to be reviewed and income verified. It is not possible for the department to determine when you will get your cheque. However, we expect that most applications will be processed within 10 weeks from when they are received.
This will depend on when your application is received by the department. It is possible that some people will get their cheques before Christmas. However, not all applications will be able to be processed and not all cheques will be sent out by that time. With the program being announced early in the heating season, people should have their cheques during the heating season when they are coping with the high cost of heating their homes.
All applications are processed in the order received. Until processed, applications are stored by date received. The Department of Finance is unable to advise applicants when their application will be processed as it would take a lot of time to search for and find individual applications. This would delay processing time, and everyone would have to wait longer for cheques.
Eligibility for the Home Heating Rebate requires that residents directly incur a cost to heat their home during the heating season. The department must have verifiable documents that show that a cost was incurred by the resident.
For homes heated with electricity, an electricity invoice is required. For homes heated with furnace oil, stove oil, or propane, an invoice showing the purchase of heating fuel is required. For homes heated with wood or wood products, an electricity invoice as well as a copy of the cutting permit and/or an invoice showing the purchase of wood is required. The heating season usually runs from September to April of a program year.
No, this is not eligible because the applicant or their spouse must have been invoiced directly for the purchase of electricity or heating fuel from September 2011 to April 2012.
The Home Heating Rebate program requires that a recent electricity or heating fuel invoice be provided in the name of the applicant, or the applicant’s spouse. Consequently, unless the invoice is in your name or your spouse’s name, you are not eligible.
To qualify for the rebate, it must be your principal place of residence. A landlord cannot claim a rebate for each rental property. The rebate is not available for commercial properties.
Applications are processed in order of date received.
No, due to the high volume of applications received we cannot send an acknowledgement letter to each applicant stating that their application has been received. If we were to undertake such a task it would delay the processing of applications and the issuance of rebate cheques.