CRA Opening Date & Closing Date 2026
CRA Netfile opening date is February 24, 2026. You can start your return sooner and can pay for it, but it cannot be submitted to the CRA prior to that date.
Closing date for 2026 is April 30, 2026. All personal taxes should be filed by that date. If you owe the CRA money you will begin to pay penalties based on filing after this date. Current late filing penalties are 5% of unpaid tax PLUS 1% of unpaid tax for each month to a maximum of 12 months.
Business income tax deadline is June 30, 2026. All business MUST file prior to this date or face penalties.
If you do not submit your tax return each year you will lose access to GST credits and Child Tax Benefits (CCB). Along with any other credits offered by the government. These will automatically be issued once your taxes are brought up to date.
Leaked files reveal CRA refunded millions by mistake
More than two years after paying out $4.99 million in an allegedly bogus refund, the Canada Revenue Agency is stuck in Federal Court trying to figure out where the money went and how to get it back.
The seven-figure refund was issued through the CRA’s automated processes in the spring of 2023 to Distribution Carflex Inc., a cash-strapped body shop in the Laurentians region of Quebec.
According to internal records obtained by the CBC’s the fifth estate and Radio-Canada, the $4.99-million transaction went through automatically, as it fell just short of a $5-million threshold for manual review in this type of tax refund. (CBC-Oct 27, 2025) Read More
Auditor General Report on CRA
In scathing report, AG finds CRA call centres are slow to answer and often inaccurate
In a scathing new report released Tuesday, the auditor general found Canada Revenue Agency contact centres are repeatedly failing to answer calls in a timely manner — and when agents do connect to a customer, they are often providing inaccurate responses.
While the CRA has committed to answering 65 per cent of calls within 15 minutes — a standard that is already much lower than it was in the past — Auditor General Karen Hogan found that just 18 per cent were answered in that time frame in 2024-25. In June, the service offered was even worse: fewer than five per cent of calls were answered within 15 minutes. (CBC-Oct 21, 2025 ) Read More
Delivering a middle-class tax cut
The government is moving forward with the proposal to deliver tax relief for Canadians by reducing the lowest marginal personal income tax rate from 15 per cent to 14 per cent, effective July 1, 2025.
Nearly 22 million Canadians are expected to benefit from this measure. The middle-class tax cut would reduce the tax rate that is applied to the first $57,375 (in 2025) of an individual’s taxable income, regardless of their income level. As shown below, the bulk of total tax relief will go to those with incomes in the two lowest tax brackets, including nearly half to those in the first bracket. This measure is expected to deliver over $27 billion in tax savings to Canadians over five years, starting in 2025-26. (Source: CRA May 27, 2025) Read More
