The Complete Canadian Business Tax & Filing Calendar
- Targeted Accounting
- Business
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Table of Contents
Two Calendars, Not One
The reason business owners miss deadlines is not carelessness. It’s that Canadian business compliance runs on two clocks at once, and most people only track one.
The calendar year governs payroll: remittances on the 15th of each month, T4 and T5 slips at the end of February, personal tax instalments in March, June, September and December. These dates are the same for every business in the country.
Your fiscal year governs everything corporate: the T2 return, the balance owing, corporate instalments, GST/HST if you file annually, and T5018 slips for contractors and trades. These dates are unique to you, and they are the ones that get missed — because a business with a 31 July year end has a corporate filing deadline in January that appears on no generic calendar.
Key Takeaways
- Corporate deadlines run on your fiscal year; payroll and slip deadlines run on the calendar year. You need both.
- For self-employed individuals, the filing deadline and the payment deadline are different dates — 15 June and 30 April.
- Corporations file at six months but pay at two or three.
- When a deadline falls on a weekend or public holiday, it generally moves to the next business day.
- If you cannot pay, file anyway. Late-filing penalties are almost always larger than the interest on an unpaid balance.
The Calendar Year, Month by Month
| Date | Obligation | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| 15 January | December payroll remittance | Regular remitters |
| 30 January | Interest on prescribed-rate loans for the prior year | Income-splitting loan arrangements |
| Last day of February | T4, T4A and T5 slips filed and distributed | All employers; corporations paying dividends |
| ~1 March | RRSP contribution deadline for the prior tax year | Individuals — 60 days after year end |
| 15 March | First personal tax instalment | Individuals over the instalment threshold |
| 31 March | T3 trust returns (90 days after a 31 Dec year end) | Trusts |
| 30 April | T1 return due for most individuals — and balance owing for everyone, including the self-employed | All individuals |
| 15 June | T1 return due for self-employed individuals and their spouses; second instalment | Self-employed |
| 15 September | Third personal instalment | Individuals over the threshold |
| 15 December | Fourth personal instalment | Individuals over the threshold |
| 31 December | Charitable donations, medical expenses and other credits must be paid to count for the year | Individuals |
Two of these deserve emphasis. The 30 April row is the one that catches self-employed people every year: your return isn’t late until 15 June, but interest on any balance begins 1 May. And the last day of February slip deadline is absolute — penalties for late T4s are charged per slip, per day, so a business with twenty employees accumulates them quickly.
Tax-loss selling deserves a note of its own. To realise a capital loss in the current year the trade must settle by 31 December, and settlement timing has changed in recent years. Confirm the last eligible trading day each December rather than assuming it is the last business day.
Deadlines Tied to Your Fiscal Year
| Obligation | Due |
|---|---|
| T2 corporate return | 6 months after fiscal year end |
| Corporate balance owing — CCPC claiming the SBD | 3 months after year end |
| Corporate balance owing — all others | 2 months after year end |
| Corporate instalments | Monthly, or quarterly for eligible small CCPCs |
| Annual GST/HST return — corporation | 3 months after year end |
| T5018 construction subcontractor slips | 6 months after the reporting period ends |
| T5013 partnership information return | Varies with partner composition — commonly 31 March or 5 months after year end |
Work out your own dates once
Take your fiscal year end and add two, three and six months. Put those three dates in a calendar with reminders a month ahead of each. For a 30 September year end that’s 30 November (balance, non-SBD), 31 December (balance, CCPC) and 31 March (return). Ninety per cent of corporate deadline problems disappear with that one exercise.
GST/HST by Filing Frequency
| Frequency | Return due | Payment due |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | One month after period end | Same date |
| Quarterly | One month after period end | Same date |
| Annual — corporation | Three months after year end | Same date |
| Annual — self-employed individual, 31 Dec year end | 15 June | 30 April |
| Annual with instalments (net tax $3,000+) | — | One month after each quarter |
Provincial Obligations
Federal deadlines are only part of the picture, and the provincial layer is where multi-province businesses lose track.
Provincial sales tax. BC PST, Manitoba RST, Saskatchewan PST and Quebec QST are filed separately with the province, on their own frequencies, which do not align with your GST/HST return.
Workers’ compensation. WSIB in Ontario, WCB in Manitoba, WorkSafeBC in British Columbia — each with its own registration requirement, premium remittance schedule and annual reconciliation. Registration is generally mandatory once you have employees, and in some industries for contractors too.
Employer payroll taxes. Ontario’s Employer Health Tax, Manitoba’s Health and Post-Secondary Education Tax Levy and BC’s Employer Health Tax each apply above a payroll threshold, with annual returns and — above higher thresholds — instalments. The exemption amounts differ by province and are adjusted periodically, so confirm your current threshold rather than relying on the figure you were told when you registered.
Corporate annual returns. Separate from the T2 and frequently forgotten. Federally incorporated companies file with Corporations Canada; provincial corporations file with their province. Missing these repeatedly can lead to dissolution, which is a genuinely disruptive thing to discover.
What Happens When You're Late
| Filing | Penalty |
|---|---|
| T1 / T2 return | 5% of the unpaid balance, plus 1% per complete month to a maximum of 12 — doubled for repeat failures within three years |
| GST/HST return | 1% of the amount owing, plus 25% of that per month late, to 12 months |
| Payroll remittance | 3% to 10% depending on how late; 20% for a knowing or grossly negligent repeat failure |
| T4 / T5 slips | Per-slip daily penalty, scaling with the number of slips |
| Instalments | Instalment interest, and an additional charge where interest exceeds a set amount |
Interest compounds daily on everything at the CRA’s prescribed rate, which is set quarterly. Interest and penalties on overdue tax are not deductible, which makes their real cost higher than the headline rate.
If circumstances genuinely outside your control caused the delay — serious illness, a natural disaster, a CRA error — the taxpayer relief provisions allow you to request cancellation of penalties and interest, generally for the previous ten calendar years. Relief is discretionary and requires documentation, but it is granted, and it is worth pursuing in real hardship rather than assuming refusal.
Building Your Own Calendar
A generic calendar is a reference; a personal one is a system. Build yours once, at the start of a fiscal year, with five inputs: your fiscal year end, your GST/HST filing frequency, your payroll remittance frequency, your province or provinces of operation, and whether you’re required to pay instalments.
From those five, every date you owe is determined. Put each in a shared calendar with a reminder two weeks ahead — long enough to gather what’s needed, short enough to still feel urgent. Assign an owner to each, even in a business of one, because “we both thought the other had it” is the most common explanation we hear for a missed filing.
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