Although the deadline for submitting tax statements is less than two weeks, the tax slides for many Canadian taxpayers still do not appear through the online platforms of the Canada Income Agency (CRA).
Each year, employers and financial institutions have to grant copies of fiscal documents, such as T4 slippers, which show income information of their work, or T5 slip, which show income from investments, to the CRA in a certain period. Then, the CRA makes these slippers available through their online portals, such as the taxpayers my account. This is how tax products such as Turbotax or tax trainers such as counters access the digitally necessary fiscal information.
This year’s problem comes from a new validation process that the CRA introduced for these slippers in January 2025. The process is supposed to guarantee that the data they obtain from employers and financial institutions are correct, according to the CRA.
“The CRA is actively working to address any pending problem, including consulting with the issuers, to ensure that the tax slides are available on the portal,” wrote a CRA spokesman in part by email.
The Income Agency He told The Globe and Mail Earlier this month, they expected to remedy the problem in mid -April, although the CRA did not answer the CBC question about whether or not they had progressed towards that goal in their email response.
Kim GC Moody, founder of Moodys Tax and expert in fiscal law, says that while some slippers begin to appear, many are not yet available digitally for many of their company’s professionals. He also says that duplicate slippers have appeared lately in some cases, which raises a new set of challenges.
What missing documents also seems to be completely random, says, instead of problems that originate with a certain type of slip or others generated by certain financial institutions or employers.
The CRA has not extended the deadline despite the problem.
What does this mean for my taxes?
Despite the missing information through CRA, you can (and must, if you must money) still presents your taxes before April 30. It may not be so fast or convenient.
When employers and financial institutions send their fiscal information to the CRA, they also send a copy. That means that you have access to the information you need to process a return, it is simply not available so easily through your CRA my account. It can mean downloading several slippers from places such as your bank’s website or a portal of online employees, or waiting for some to receive by mail.
If you perform your own online taxes using a service such as Intuit or Turbotax, this means that you probably cannot use the automatic approach function to import information. Instead, you will have to manually complete each field line per line.
Both WealthSimple and Turbotax told CBC that they are aware of the problem. Turbotax acknowledged in an email statement that the missing slippers were affecting the automatic approach function of their service, and said they were “in direct contact with senior CRA officials, underlining the need for responsibility and decisive action to solve these problems for our clients and all Canadians.”
For those who pay a professional to present their taxes for them, that will require sending some or all their individual tax slides to their accountant or accountant so that they have the information they need to complete their return.
Those who carry out their own taxes who do not realize that part of their income information could end up submitting incorrectly, and missing the savings, or they must more than what was initially calculated as a result.
The clock is marking to present your taxes. People must be April 30. But if you are new in Canada, it can be a complicated process to navigate. Volunteers of Diversuity, a social services agency, are helping newcomers to submit their taxes until April 16. Kathryn Sim, Dan Burritt, joins Kathryn Sim, annual administrator of the Income Tax Clinic.
Shari-Lynn Hiltz, a certified counter in Halifax, says that those who present their own taxes without automatic approach should verify their sources of income as much as possible before they are presented. That may seem to refer to its total annual income as shown in its T4 with the amount of the year that won that is shown in its last Paystub of the year.
Contacting investments and financial institutions to make sure they have all the necessary slippers is also a good idea, she says.
And even if the longest process is to drag things, Hiltz says it is important to present on April 30, especially if he hopes to have money, since he will have to pay a tariff to the CRA in that case. She says it is better to present on time and find discrepancies or possible savings later.
Causing headaches for tax professionals
While the inability to focus could not raise great decelerations for people who present their own taxes, it is creating headaches for tax professionals who present hundreds, if not thousands of returns for customers, each tax season.
Hiltz is only one of those professionals who says that the problem of missing slippers is to make his work much more difficult this year.
She says that almost all her clients have had at least one or two documents that are missing online; In fact, he says that only one or two returns that he has processed have had no problems with the missing receipts. This means that you have to start a return, then put it in pause while asking that client to provide the missing documents by email or bringing a physical copy.
Very active8:00Personal finance with Bruce Sellery: retain from the tax declaration
It is the tax season … so in the Go’s Money money columnist is here with some tips on how and why do it before the deadline. (Krissy Holmes with Bruce Sellery)
It also uses the automatic approach function to accelerate the process, instead of manually entering each line amount per line. The manual entrance, plus the stop and the beginning when things are missing, has greatly diminished to Hiltz greatly, he says.
Hiltz anticipates that he has delayed it for at least one or two. And although all tax trainers do absolutely everything that is in their possession to avoid presenting the deadline of end of April, she says that some of her statements may be pressed beyond that date.
“It’s exhausting,” said Hiltz. “It’s causing more … interruptions in our work. You know you can’t stay so focused on one thing because you have all these people trying to find missing information.”
Moody echoes Hiltz’s concerns. Depending on how many documents a client has, he says that this could duplicate, triple or even quadruple the amount of time to process its return.
He says that he is disappointed with what he sees as a pattern of fiscal seasons for some kind of problem: the 2023 Vio tax season a last minute extension granted For the owners to present taxes for vacant or under -infra -fold residential properties, while last year, a Pause for the requirements for the presentation of new naked trusts He arrived a few days before the presentation deadline.
“I doubt in criticizing the CRA … because they have an important job to do. But I think there must be a serious reflection of what is happening with its technological platforms and its internal processes,” Moody said.
