tofu

two diff. types of income splitting

-  if you are retired, you can split your pension income, rif income or rrsp income under certain conditions

-if you are not retired, you can split your future retirement income by spousal rrsp,  it may benefit you or not, depend on your situation

if you have child and/or your spouse earn no/little income, you may able to get more tax cr.

$2500 - max student loan deduction???
sounds like it is the US policy.  where did you get this info.

tofu

when you said you are newly married, i believe you mean you married before/on dec 31, 08.  otherwise you are still single for yr 2008.

theoretical, there are no diff. bet'n fill together or separate. unless you don't want your spouse knows the details of your t1.  anyway, you still need to put down your spouse's name, sin, income on the front page of your t1.  b/c some benefit are using family income.

if your tax return is simple, just have t4, rrsp, maybe couple t5, you can try the demo version of cantax.  cantax is the best one, but expensive.

you can get the demo version from cantax's webite for free.  it does exact the same job, but you won't able to print out the copy.  usually i just copy the calc'd amt back to a paper tax return.

quicktax offers trial version as well, but don't know is it good.

if your income is the same as last yr, you should able to get more money back.  since the personal tax cr has increase & ....
esp if your wife is not working or earning low income

btw, why toppy thinks u r new to canada