Low-Cost Tax Court Accounting Support for Canadian Businesses and Individuals

The usual route is online banking: add the CRA as a payee, choose the account type and the tax year, and pay as you would any bill. You can also use the CRA's My Payment service with a debit card, set up pre-authorised debit inside My Account, pay at your financial institution, or pay by credit card through a third-party provider that charges its own fee. Keep the confirmation, since payments do not always post to your CRA account immediately.

Yes. Employment Insurance benefits are taxable income and must be reported on your return. Service Canada issues a T4E slip showing the benefits paid and the tax already withheld, and that withholding is often less than the rate that ends up applying, because it takes no account of employment income earned earlier in the same year. Many claimants therefore owe a balance at filing. If your income for the year is high enough, part of any regular benefits may also be repayable — the repayment never touches maternity, parental or sickness benefits, and it does not apply where you have not received regular benefits in the previous ten years.

The individual and business enquiry numbers, along with their hours, are listed on the CRA contact page. Have your social insurance number or business number and a figure from a recent return ready, because the agent must verify you before discussing anything. Many tasks never need a call: CRA My Account and My Business Account show balances, assessments, slips and instalments, and let you file a dispute, change a return or set up a payment arrangement.

Pay through your bank's online bill payment, CRA My Payment, pre-authorised debit set up in My Account, a credit card through a third-party provider, or at a Canadian financial institution with a remittance voucher. Interest runs daily on an unpaid balance from the due date, so pay what you can even if you cannot clear it all. If you cannot pay in full, call the CRA to arrange a payment plan; penalty and interest relief is requested on form RC4288.

There is no single CRA fax number. Fax lines belong to particular offices and programs, so the only reliable number is the one printed on the letter you are answering. Faxing without that reference risks your documents landing in the wrong queue. Submitting them through My Account, My Business Account or Represent a Client is faster and gives you a confirmation, which a fax does not.

Spread or shelter it. Contributing to an RRSP in the same year, if you have room, offsets the income directly; the RRSP dollar limit is $33,810 for 2026 and $32,490 for 2025. Where the lump sum is a retiring allowance, part may be transferred to an RRSP outside your normal room. Qualifying retroactive lump sums can be taxed as if received in the earlier years. Ask the payer to reduce withholding only with CRA approval.

Rental profit is taxed as ordinary income at your marginal rate; there is no special landlord rate. You report gross rent and deduct current expenses such as mortgage interest, property tax, insurance, utilities, repairs, advertising, condo fees and reasonable management costs. Capital improvements are added to the property's cost rather than deducted. A rental loss can generally offset other income. On sale, the gain is a capital gain, half of which is taxable for 2025 and 2026.

Something in the mix changed. A raise or bonus can lift income into a higher bracket while withholding lags behind, a second job or contract work adds income with nothing held back, a credit or deduction claimed last year may no longer apply, and pension or investment income usually arrives with little tax withheld. Compare this year's slips against last year's return line by line, then ask your employer to withhold extra or budget for instalments.

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.

There is no general exemption an individual can apply for. Minors file and are taxed the same way as anyone else, with the same personal credits. Organizations are different: a registered charity must apply to CRA and be approved, and a non-profit organization qualifies only while it is not operated for profit and no income is payable to its members. Most trusts, and all ordinary corporations including banks, stay taxable. Some museums qualify as registered charities.

You can ask, but no employer has to issue it before the CRA's annual slip deadline shortly after year end, and payroll often cannot finalise the numbers until then. If you need figures sooner, use your last pay statement of the year for gross pay, income tax, CPP and EI to date. Slips also appear in CRA My Account once the employer files them. Filing from an estimate invites a reassessment later, so wait for the slip.

A private creditor cannot take a refund from the CRA directly. CRA itself can apply your refund against tax you owe, and under federal set-off it can be redirected to other government debts such as defaulted student loans or benefit overpayments. Once the money reaches your bank account it is an ordinary asset, so a collection agency holding a court judgment and a garnishment order can seize it there. Unpaid tax is not reported to credit bureaus, although CRA can register a lien.