Affordable Charity Compliance Review for Canadian Non-Profits and Charities

For the 2025 tax year the filing and payment deadline is 30 April 2026. If you or your spouse carried on a business, the return itself is due 15 June 2026, but any balance owing is still due 30 April 2026. Interest runs on unpaid amounts after the payment deadline, and a late-filed return with a balance owing also attracts a late-filing penalty. Filing on time keeps benefit and credit payments flowing.

There is no single rate. Federal personal income tax for 2026 runs through five brackets: 14%, then 20.5%, 26%, 29% and 33% on the highest band, and your province's brackets stack on top, so your combined marginal rate is the federal rate plus the provincial one. The 2026 federal basic personal amount is $16,452, tapering to $14,829 as net income rises from $181,440 to $258,482. Capital gains and Canadian dividends are taxed on a different basis.

As the rules stand for the 2025 tax year filed in 2026, the late-filing penalty is 5% of the balance owing plus 1% of that balance for each full month the return is late, to a maximum of 12 months, so 17% at worst. It rises to 10% plus 2% per month for up to 20 months, a 50% maximum, but only where the CRA formally demanded the return and had already charged a late-filing penalty for any of the three preceding tax years. Interest compounds daily.

Sign in to CRA My Account and open the tax returns section, which lists your assessed returns, notices of assessment and reassessment, and carry-forward amounts for earlier years. You can also download a proof of income statement, request a copy by phone, or ask whoever prepared the return for you. Keep your own copy and the supporting records for six years from the end of the tax year they relate to.

Yes. Social assistance is reported on a slip and included in income, then offset by a matching deduction, so it does not create tax, but it does count when benefits are calculated. Filing is how you receive refundable amounts: the GST/HST credit, the Canada child benefit, provincial credits, and any tax withheld on other income during the year. Many people on assistance get money back only because they filed, so file every year even with no tax payable.

There is no fixed student refund. A refund is simply the tax withheld from your pay minus the tax you actually owe, so a student with modest earnings and some withholding often gets most of it back. Tuition amounts are a non-refundable credit: they reduce tax owing but do not create a refund on their own, and unused amounts carry forward to later years or can be transferred to a parent, grandparent or spouse within limits.

Tips are taxable income. Controlled tips your employer distributes are already inside the employment income on your T4, so you do not add them again. Direct tips and cash tips customers hand you are not on a T4, and you report them yourself as other employment income on your T1. Keep a daily record of amounts received. Declared tips can also raise your CPP contributions and the benefits based on them, so the record matters.

Land transfer tax is provincial and is charged on the purchase price, usually on a graduated scale, so the cost depends on the province and the price. Buyers in Toronto pay a municipal land transfer tax on top of Ontario's. Alberta, Saskatchewan and the territories charge registration or transfer fees instead of a full tax. Several provinces offer first-time buyer rebates, and non-resident buyers can face extra tax. Use your province's own calculator before closing.

Match what is withheld to what you will owe. Ask your employer to deduct extra tax if you have a second job, a pension, or investment income with nothing taken off, and review the credits you claimed on the personal tax credits return you filed with them. Self-employed people should set money aside each month and pay instalments when the CRA asks. RRSP contributions made before the annual contribution deadline early in the next year also cut the balance.

If the amount is wrong because of something you reported, ask for an adjustment using a T1-ADJ or the change-my-return service in My Account. If you disagree with a CRA reassessment, file a formal objection within the deadline printed on the notice, setting out the facts and attaching support; an appeals officer reviews it independently. Interest keeps running while you object, so consider paying to stop it. Penalty and interest relief is requested on form RC4288.

Line 101 reports your total sales and other revenue for the reporting period, before tax. Include taxable, zero-rated and exempt sales, and revenue from supplies made outside Canada, using the same accounting basis as your books. Leave out the GST/HST you charged, and leave out provincial sales tax. The figure itself does not create tax; what you remit comes from the collected-tax and input-tax-credit lines further down the return.

Basic groceries are zero-rated, which means taxable at a nil rate, so nothing is charged on staples such as milk, bread, vegetables, meat and most unprepared food. Tax applies to what the CRA treats as outside basic groceries: restaurant and prepared meals, most snack foods, candy, carbonated and sweetened drinks, and heated or catered items. A retailer selling zero-rated groceries still claims input tax credits on its own taxable costs.