Twice a year the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) issues new tax tables for Canadian payroll.  These tables are updated on January 1^st and  July 1^st every year.  The payroll tax tables calculate the CPP, EI and Federal Tax Deductions which are to be withheld on your employee paycheques.  On January 1^st, 2013, the newest tax rates came into effect.  This week you are likely preparing your first payroll of 2013, so please ensure that you are using these new rates.  If you are preparing your payroll manually, you can find the new online calculators here http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/bsnss/tpcs/pyrll/tbls-eng.html

If you are using a piece of accounting software such as QuickBooks or Simply Accounting,  you want to ensure that you are using these new tables.  To check that you have the latest payroll tables installed, check your software.  For QuickBooks, you would go into the Help Menu – My License Information.
The last section of this screen shows you the version of the tax table and its expiry date.  If it doesn’t now read June 30, 2013, you don’t have the most recent figures for calculation.  If the date still reads Dec 31, 2012 then you should run QuickBooks update to download and install the new updates.
There were changes to both the CPP and EI thresholds this January, so you want to make sure that you have the right figures.