T4 Deadline Canada Guide

The T4 deadline is the single most important date in the Canadian payroll calendar. Every business with employees has to file T4 slips and a T4 Summary with CRA by the last day of February for the prior calendar year. Miss the deadline and the penalties compound quickly. This guide walks through what a T4 actually is, when it is due, what happens when you get it wrong, and how to make February stress-free.

What a T4 slip is and who needs one

A T4, formally called a "Statement of Remuneration Paid," is the year-end slip that reports each employee's total employment earnings and the amounts you withheld and remitted on their behalf during the calendar year. CRA uses the T4 to reconcile employee personal tax returns against employer remittances. Employees use the T4 to file their personal tax returns.

A T4 is required for every employee to whom you paid at least $500 in the calendar year, or from whom you deducted CPP, EI, or income tax (regardless of the dollar amount). That second clause catches a lot of edge cases. An employee who worked one week and earned $300, where you still deducted CPP and EI, needs a T4.

The T4 also reports taxable benefits. Personal use of a company vehicle, employer-paid life insurance premiums over $50,000 of coverage, cell phone allowances with personal-use portions, parking, and several other benefit categories all show up in specific T4 boxes. Getting the boxes right is part of the filing.

The exact T4 filing deadline each year

The deadline is the last day of February. In a standard year, that is February 28. In a leap year (2028, 2032, and so on), it is February 29. If the last day of February falls on a Saturday or Sunday, the deadline moves to the next business day.

Two actions must happen by the deadline. First, file the T4 slips and the T4 Summary with CRA. Second, distribute copies of the T4 slips to each employee. Both actions are due by the same date, not staggered.

The filing is for the prior calendar year's earnings. So T4s filed by February 28, 2026 cover pay periods from January 1, 2025 through December 31, 2025. The calendar year is the tax year for T4 purposes, regardless of your business's fiscal year.

Penalties for missing the T4 deadline

CRA's penalty structure scales with the number of slips and the lateness. For small employers with under 50 slips, the base penalty is a flat amount per day late up to a maximum. For larger employers, the penalty is higher and can reach several thousand dollars quickly.

Current penalty brackets roughly:

• 1 to 5 slips late: $100 minimum penalty for up to 3 days late, scaling upward for longer delays.
• 6 to 10 slips late: $500 range for short delays.
• 11 to 50 slips late: Higher brackets, typically $1,000 to $1,500.
• 51 to 500 slips: $2,500 range.
• 501 or more slips: $7,500 or more.

Separately from the late-filing penalty, any unremitted source-deduction balance from the prior year that surfaces at T4 time accrues interest from the original remittance due dates. See our payroll deductions guide for how remittance and T4 filing interact.

The indirect cost is often larger than the direct penalty. Employees cannot file their personal taxes until they have their T4. A February-29-still-no-T4 situation in a 40-person business means 40 employees asking the office manager about their T4 simultaneously. Trust in the business erodes measurably.

What information goes on a T4

The T4 slip has a set of numbered boxes that report different income and deduction categories. The most common ones:

• Box 14: Employment income. Gross pay for the year.
• Box 16: Employee CPP contributions.
• Box 17: Employee QPP contributions (Quebec only).
• Box 18: Employee EI premiums.
• Box 22: Income tax deducted.
• Box 24: EI insurable earnings.
• Box 26: CPP pensionable earnings.
• Box 40: Taxable benefits.
• Boxes 28-88: Various specialised reporting for things like RRSP contributions, union dues, charitable donations through payroll, housing allowances, etc.

Getting the pensionable and insurable earnings boxes correct matters because CRA reconciles them against your source-deduction remittances. Mismatches trigger reassessments.

T4 versus T4A

The T4 reports employment income. The T4A reports other income types: self-employed commissions, pension income, certain scholarships and research grants, lump-sum payments from retirement plans, and contractor payments over $500 where you are required to file a T4A.

The line between a T4 and a T4A is the line between an employee and a contractor. Our employee versus contractor guide covers the CRA four-factor test in detail. In short: if you control when and how the work is done, you pay the worker through payroll (T4). If the worker is a legitimate independent contractor, you report their earnings on a T4A where applicable.

Misclassifying a worker who should be on T4 and putting them on T4A instead is a major CRA audit trigger. The remedy is costly: back-remittance of CPP and EI the business should have withheld and matched, plus penalty, plus interest.

How to file T4s electronically

Businesses filing more than 50 T4 slips MUST file electronically. Businesses with 50 or fewer may still file on paper, though electronic filing is faster, cheaper, and has lower error rates.

Electronic filing happens through:

• CRA Web Forms. Free browser-based filing for up to 100 slips. Suitable for small businesses doing T4 manually.
• Payroll software XML upload. Every major Canadian payroll platform generates T4 XML files that upload directly to CRA through the Internet File Transfer portal. This is the normal flow for businesses running payroll through software or a partner.
• A payroll partner's filing service. Outsourced payroll providers file T4s on your behalf as part of their standard year-end service. No action from you required.

The filing itself, done correctly, takes minutes. The time sink is the reconciliation work beforehand: checking that pensionable and insurable earnings match source-deduction remittances, confirming taxable benefits are on the right slips, and chasing down any data errors from earlier in the year.

How a Canadian payroll partner handles T4 filing

A specialised payroll partner handles T4 filing as part of the annual service. Throughout the year, every pay period's data flows into the system. At year end, the system generates T4 slips for every employee, produces the T4 Summary, reconciles against remittance records, and files with CRA by the deadline. Employees receive digital copies through a secure portal. Paper copies are distributed for businesses that need them.

Year-end work that would otherwise consume weeks of management and accounting time compresses to a few hours of review and sign-off. The error rate drops materially because the underlying data is already reconciled as part of monthly operations. See our Record of Employment guide for the analogous workflow for mid-year employee departures, which feeds directly into year-end T4 accuracy.

Common T4 mistakes to avoid

Four mistakes show up most often:

Missing taxable benefits. Cell phone allowances with a personal-use portion, parking, gym memberships, and employer-paid premiums on term life insurance over $50,000 are all taxable and need T4 reporting. Missing these is the single most common CRA reassessment finding.

CPP and EI mismatches. Box 24 (EI insurable earnings) and Box 26 (CPP pensionable earnings) must match the deductions reported in Boxes 16, 17, 18, and 22 within the allowed rounding tolerances. Mismatches trigger automatic CRA follow-up.

Wrong SIN. A mistyped Social Insurance Number on a T4 means the slip cannot match to the employee's personal tax return. The employee's return gets delayed and they contact you.

Missing the deadline because February is a short month. February has 28 days (or 29 in a leap year), not 31. Teams that mentally block T4 work "at the end of the month" run out of time.

Next steps

If you run a Canadian business that issues T4s, the single best thing you can do before year-end is reconcile monthly. Errors caught monthly take hours to fix. The same errors caught on February 27 take days. Our PEO Canada cornerstone guide covers what an outsourced payroll arrangement handles across the year, T4 filing included. To request a free assessment, use our contact page.