Have you made a mistake or need to change your tax return? Here’s how

With the 2024 tax season now over for most of us (those with self-employment income and their spouse or partner still have until June 16 to file), the preliminary tax filing stats have been released by the

Canada Revenue Agency

. Of the 29.9 million personal tax returns filed to date, 94 per cent of us filed electronically, either using NETFILE for self-filing, or via a tax professional using EFILE. Nearly 60 per cent of Canadians who filed a 2024 return received a tax refund, with the average refund being $2,000.

But what if you need to amend or change your recently-filed return, either because of a mistake, an omission such as finding an errant T-slip or missing donation receipt, or for any other reason? According to a CRA news release earlier this month, when it comes to changing a tax return already filed, most Canadians are still choosing to submit their request by paper, even if they filed their original tax return online. In 2024, more than two million change requests were submitted by paper, which was 80 per cent of all requests.

The CRA is trying to change this by encouraging taxpayers to submit their change request online, calling it “faster … easy and secure.” One of the reasons some taxpayers may need to make a change to their initial 2024 tax filings may be related to some of the 2024 tax slips, such as the T3 (trust income), T4 (remuneration paid), T4A (pension and other income) and T5 (investment income)

slips being unavailable

in the CRA My Account or through the Autofill my Return service as early as they were in previous years. In addition, some slips, such as the T4PS slips to report participation in your employer’s employees profit sharing plan (EPSP), are inexplicably never available online and thus must be manually entered each year. This can often be a source of frustration for some employees who fail to enter the T4PS amounts manually into their tax preparation software, having relied nearly exclusively on the CRA autofill feature to capture all their tax slips.

The good news is that it’s easy to fix your return if you forgot to include something or spotted a mistake after filing. By fixing it online, you’ll receive “significantly faster service” than if you submit your change request by paper. The CRA noted that it only takes about two weeks to process an online change request. Due to a higher-than-normal paper inventory, however, paper requests will take “significantly longer” to process. By submitting your request online, you will receive your notice of reassessment (NOR) and any refund you may be owed sooner.

So, how do you change your return electronically? First, don’t do anything until you have received your 2024 notice of assessment (NOA). Once your return has been assessed, and you’ve got your NOA in hand, there are a couple of ways you can go about submitting a change.

The first way to request a change is to go through the

CRA My Account

. Once you log in, there’s a service called

Change my return

that lets you request a change to a tax return for any of the 10 previous calendar years. It walks you through common updates such as adding tax slips or claiming the disability tax credit. It also includes questions and messages when the CRA needs more information, detects errors, or needs supporting documents to finalize your request.

To make it even easier to find this year, the CRA has added a Change my return button to the tax returns section of the Overview page in My Account. This allows you to easily access the Change my return service for a particular tax year.

Of course, to use this feature, you’ll need to be registered for CRA My Account, which is now easier than in prior years since you can use the relatively new

document verification service

, which allows you to verify your identity and get immediate access to your online account, without having to wait for a CRA security code by mail. This is especially convenient given the threat of

another upcoming postal strike

. According to the CRA, in 2025 alone, more than 280,000 individuals have already used this document verification service.

Another way to amend a prior year return is to use the ReFILE service, which is an online service that lets you send online adjustment requests with the same NETFILE-certified tax software you used for filing your tax return online initially. You can use ReFILE to send adjustment requests for 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 returns. Tax professionals who submit returns using the EFILE service, can use ReFILE for EFILE service providers.

Some change requests may need you to send in supporting documents, such as donation or RRSP contribution receipts. But that shouldn’t stop you from submitting your request online. If you do need to submit documents you can do so easily through your online My CRA account after submitting your online change request. The CRA’s Submit documents online page outlines the steps you will need to take, so you can easily submit any documents needed to support your request without having to print or mail anything to the CRA.

Once your request has been reviewed, you will get a NOR, indicating the changes made to your tax return or, if no changes were made, you’ll get a letter explaining why the CRA didn’t process your requested changes.

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Finally, it’s important to keep all receipts and documents for at least six years after you file your tax return, in case the CRA asks to see them. This includes items such as cancelled cheques or bank statements, or proof of any deduction or credit that you claimed. It’s also a good idea to keep a copy of your tax return, the related NOA, and any NORs you receive for each year. These can be stored electronically, with cloud back-up, so that your tax information is always easily and quickly retrievable, should the CRA come knocking.

Jamie Golombek,
FCPA, FCA, CFP, CLU, TEP, is the managing director, Tax & Estate Planning with CIBC Private Wealth in Toronto.
Jamie.Golombek@cibc.com

.

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