Banking

General Banking Information Debit Cards Credit Cards

Financial Institutions

Bank of Montreal (BMO)
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC)
Royal Bank of Canada (RBC)
TD Canada Trust
One of the first things you might want to do is opening an account at a bank. Those 4 banks above are the biggest ones in Toronto. To open an account, you need among other things your passport and your visa. There are several things to consider when opening an account. Based on our experience some questions you might want to ask yourself are

How many automated teller machines (ATMs) does the bank have? It is possible to withdraw money from ATMs that do not belong to your bank, but this usually involves paying a service fee. And there is no such thing as a bunch of banks whose ATMs can be used interchangably.
What is the monthly service charge? It varies from bank to bank and time to time. E.g. there are no fees at certain banks as long as you maintain a minimum balance, you can pay a flat fee, the fee may only cover a certain number of transactions per month - including paying by debit card...
What are their rates for converting foreign cheques? Just in case your family sends you money..
Where is the closest branch? It is a non-trivial task for the branches to transfer your account to another branch - it usually involves fees. But you will nevertheless be able to fulfill all your banking needs at any branch of your bank no matter where you opened the account.
...

A note of warning: Although you would not expect it, there is also banking fraud in Canada, so you should rather check your monthly statements.

Credit Cards

In order to get a credit card, you need a credit history. This usually means having had an account for a longer time or having had another credit card before - within Canada (personal anecdote). So what are your options to get a credit card faster than within 1 year's time?

UofT has an affinity program, which includes a financial institutions that grants credit cards (MasterCard) also to students without a credit history - the MBNA Canada Bank. Usually at around the start of the term their promoters swarm campus (e.g. the Kofler Center) to offer credit card applications to everybody.
Apply for one of the "credit cards" of the bigger stores like SEARS or THE BAY (two big department stores in Toronto). But be aware that those are not real credit cards, you can pay using them only at those stores.
A third possibility (at least with customers of CIBC) is to deposit money in a GIC (I still have no idea what this is) and then having a credit limit of exactly that amount (personal anecdote).

Things to remember

Very important facts about credit cards

You must pay your minimum payment on time. Otherwise your credit rating will drop which is a really bad thing.
There are credit cards with no annual fee, and the interest rates vary between different cards.

As a closing remark: at first you will only qualify for the most basic credit card, but after about a year you might qualify for "advanced" cards that have features like

collecting airmiles with every purchase,
getting a fraction of every dollar spent on you card back at the end of the year,
extending the warranty of items purchased with the card,
...

But check the features of your first card carefully, some banks charge interest, which is for the basic cards about 19% per year, starting at the time of purchase, while others will grant a "grace" period until after you have received your monthly statement.

Debit Cards

There are several types of accounts. The most common ones are Chequing and Savings, the difference being that latter account comes with a book to print everything in and you earn some interest - increasing with balance - whereas the former comes with a debit card. A debit card is almost like a credit card - apart from one major detail: everytime you use it the money is immediately taken from your account - and if there is no money in your account, you cannot use it.

Tax Information

At around March each year, you have to do your taxes. Yes, that is right. You have to file your taxes, but you have the freedom to choose one of several ways to do so. Luckily, the ISC offers annual Tax Sessions. Generally, your strategy will be one of the following.

Go to a Canada Post office and pick up a so-called tax package, and fill it out.
Use the online service netfile
Use the online service efile

It takes about a day the first time to do it, so it is advisable to do it together with other people in their first year. If your funding is the same, chances are your tax report also will be the same ;-) If you receive the basic funding package, you can expect to receive a refund of a few hundred dollars in the first year. But no guarantee given, laws keep changing!
Another noteworthy thing is that additional taxes are always excluded in prices you see advertised - except on some types of unprocessed food, alcohol, and food items below 1CAD. The provincial + gouvernmental tax (PST and HST respectively) add up to 15%, so you'd better start training multiplying by 1.15 ;-)

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