File your first tax return in Canada as a newcomer

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The first year is the one that trips people up: the residency date, world income, and applying for benefits before you've ever filed. File even if you earned nothing here; it's how the benefits keep coming.

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7 steps · about 2½ hr of your time
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The steps

  1. Step 1: Work out your residency date

    For most people it's the day you started living here, with a home, partner or kids in Canada. It goes on the return as month and day. Before that date you report Canadian income only; from that date on, everything you earned anywhere, in Canadian dollars.

    Completing your return as a newcomercanada.ca
    15 min

  2. Step 2: Apply for benefits now, before your first return

    You don't have to wait a year. Apply for the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit (it used to be the GST/HST credit) with RC151. No kids: there's a web form. Kids under 19: mail RC151 with RC66 and RC66SCH for the Canada child benefit.

    Apply as a newcomercanada.caCanada child benefitcanada.ca
    30 min

  3. Step 3: Note what your things were worth the day you arrived

    Shares, jewellery, art, collections: the CRA treats them as if you bought them at market value on your residency date. Write those values down now; they're your cost if you ever sell.

    15 min

  4. Step 4: Collect your T4s and other slips

    Employers send T4s by the end of February. In Ontario, also jot down what you paid in rent or property tax for the Ontario Trillium Benefit; you keep the receipts rather than sending them.

    20 min

  5. Step 5: File with free certified software, or at a free tax clinic

    NETFILE needs your SIN, and several certified programs are free. If your income is modest, a volunteer clinic will do it with you, but they can't take foreign income, self-employment or rentals, so check before you book.

    Certified tax softwarecanada.caFree tax clinicscanada.ca
    1 hr

  6. Step 6: File by April 30, and every year after

    The first return is due April 30 of the year after you arrive. Self-employed: June 15, but anything you owe is still due April 30. Skip a year and the benefits stop.

    5 min

  7. Step 7: Sign up for your CRA account after the first assessment

    You need numbers from an assessed return to register, so this comes once your first notice of assessment arrives.

    Register for a CRA accountcanada.ca
    15 min

Written by people who have done it, not by Helg or any government. Check the official sites before you pay for anything.

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