Every year we have a version of the same conversation in late February.
Corporate tax estimates are prepared and sent to business owners. They are advised to make tax payments before the end of the month; however, they thought that because the tax return isn’t due until six months after year-end, they are also fine to wait until then to make the payments. The issue is that any corporate taxes owing are due two or three months after the year-end, not six, and the two dates have nothing to do with each other. And even if you did pay your taxes by the two or three month mark, if you didn’t pay corporate tax instalments throughout the year, you may already be subject to interest.
That gap between when you file and when you pay is where most deadline problems live. Not in missing the specific filing deadlines, but in assuming one date covers both obligations, for every entity, in every situation.
Fall is the right time to sort this out. Many of the decisions that change your tax position for the 2026 tax year have to be made or implemented before December 31st, including your instalment approach for the last quarter and much of your compensation planning. Other steps, such as a 2026 RRSP contribution, may still be completed after year-end. By the time most filing and payment deadlines arrive, however, the main planning window has closed.
The dates have been listed below for each entity. Each section opens with what is due and when, then explains where the decisions actually sit.
2026 Tax Year Deadlines
Corporations with non-calendar year-ends should map their own dates from the rules in each section rather than working from this table.
Personal Taxes: Employees, Investors and Sole Proprietors
- Most individuals file and pay: April 30, 2027
- Sole proprietors and their spouses file: June 15, 2027
- Sole proprietors, pay any balance owing: April 30, 2027
- RRSP contribution for the 2026 tax year: March 1, 2027
April 30, 2027 falls on a Friday, so there is no weekend extension to lean on.
If you carried on a business in 2026 as a sole proprietor or an unincorporated partner, you get until June 15, 2027 to file, and your spouse or common-law partner gets the same extension. What neither of you gets is extra time to pay.
This is the most expensive misunderstanding in personal tax, and it is expensive precisely because nothing looks wrong. You filed on time. There is no late-filing penalty. There is just interest, compounding daily from May 1 at the prescribed rate in effect during the overdue period. CRA sets that rate quarterly; the rate for May and June 2027 will not be known until 2027. For context, the overdue-tax rate for the fourth quarter of 2026 is 7%.
Consider a consultant with $280,000 of net business income and no source deductions, whose balance comes to roughly $95,000. If the applicable rate were 7% throughout the period, paying on June 15th rather than April 30th would cost about $840 in interest.
The practical version of this: sole proprietors should be estimating their balance in January, not discovering it in May. If your bookkeeping is current at year-end, you can have a reliable number by the end of February and fund it deliberately. If your books close in April, April 30th will always be a guess.
The RRSP date belongs on the fall calendar for the same reason. If a contribution is part of how you are managing a bonus or a dividend, making room for it is a December decision, not a February one.
Corporate Taxes: Two Deadlines, and the One Most Owners Get Wrong
- T2 return: six months after year-end. For a December 31, 2026 year-end, June 30, 2027
- Balance of tax, general rule: two months after year-end. For a December 31, 2026 year-end, March 1, 2027 (February 28 is a Sunday)
- Balance of tax, CCPC that qualifies for small business deduction (“SBD”): three months after year-end. For a December 31, 2026 year-end, March 31, 2027
The filing rule is mechanical. For a March 31st year-end, the return is due September 30th. For a year-end that lands mid-month, say September 23rd, the deadline is the corresponding day six months out, or March 23rd.
The balance of tax is a different question with a different answer.
A Canadian-controlled private corporation (“CCPC”) gets three months instead of two, but only if it meets all three conditions: it was a CCPC throughout the year, it claimed the small business deduction in the current or previous year, and its taxable income for the previous year did not exceed its business limit. Where corporations are associated, the test looks at combined taxable income against combined business limits.
The third condition is the one that catches growing companies.
For example, an Ontario software company with a December 31st year-end had taxable income of $640,000 in 2025. Good year, and comfortably over the $500,000 business limit. For its 2026 tax year, the three-month extension is gone, so the balance is due at two months, March 1, 2027. The controller still has March 31st in the calendar, because March 31st has been the date for six years. On a $120,000 balance, the miss would cost about $690 in interest if the applicable rate were 7% throughout March 2027; the actual rate for that quarter has not yet been announced. The problem is that nobody looked, and the same oversight applies to instalments, where the numbers are typically larger.
Two things follow. The balance-due day has to be re-derived each year against last year's taxable income rather than carried forward from last year's calendar. And crossing the business limit is a cash-timing event, not only a tax-rate change.
The late-filing side is simpler and more punitive. Filing a T2 late costs 5% of the unpaid tax at the deadline plus 1% for each complete month, up to 12 months. Where the CRA assessed a failure-to-file penalty in any of the three prior years, that doubles to 10% plus 2% per month for up to 20 months. Note the base: it is a percentage of unpaid tax, so a corporation that filed late but paid on time generally has no exposure under this rule.
Companies with a June 30th or September 30th year-end tend to manage all of this better, because nothing about their calendar is automatic and they were forced to build a schedule. Calendar-year companies inherit a default and stop thinking about it. If you have operational reasons to change a year-end, fall is when to model it: the change requires CRA approval, creates a short tax year, and moves every downstream date including instalments.
Holding Companies: The Entity Everyone Assumes Is Dormant
- T2 return: six months after the holdco's year-end, which is often not the opco's year-end
- Balance of tax, holdco with only investment income: two months after year-end, because no small business deduction is claimed
- Instalments: required once tax payable exceeds $3,000 in the current or previous year
Holding companies generate more surprise deadline problems than operating companies, for a simple reason: it’s not earning active business and is sometimes considered an afterthought.
Take a holdco that received surplus cash from the operating company years ago and now holds a $2.5 million investment portfolio. If it earns roughly $95,000 of interest in 2026, an Ontario CCPC's initial combined federal and provincial tax is about 50.17%, so the bill is close to $47,700. A significant portion is potentially refundable when the corporation pays taxable dividends, but refundable is not the same as deferred. It is payable now.
Now apply the balance-due rule. This corporation earns no active business income, claims no small business deduction, and therefore does not qualify for the three-month extension. Its balance is due two months after year-end. Its tax payable is also well above $3,000, which means it should have been paying instalments throughout the year, and likely has not been.
The second holdco issue is calendar sprawl. Holdcos often have a different year-end than the opco, frequently by design, to manage the timing of intercorporate dividends. That is sound planning, and it also means a two-entity group carries four balance and filing dates, two instalment schedules, and GST/HST on top if the holdco charges management fees. Nobody holds that in their head. It belongs in a schedule someone owns. The tax benefits of a holding company are real, and they depend on the structure being administered properly.
Trust Returns: March 31, 2027, and a Rule That Just Changed
- T3 return: 90 days after the trust's tax year-end. For a December 31, 2026 year-end, the due date is March 31, 2027
- Balance of tax: the same day, March 31, 2027
- T3 slips to beneficiaries: the same day, March 31, 2027
- First reportable bare trust filings: March 31, 2027
Beneficiaries need those slips to file their own returns by April 30th, which compresses the timeline further.
Ninety days is short. If a family trust made distributions in 2026, the allocation decisions, the resolutions and the bookkeeping all have to be settled between January 1st and March 31st, in the busiest quarter in accounting. Trusts that get this wrong are rarely trusts that ignored the deadline. They are trusts whose supporting records were not ready in time.
The part to watch this year is bare trusts. CRA did not require most bare trusts to file for 2023 unless it made a direct request, and legislative changes relieved bare trusts from filing for 2024 and 2025. After three years of relief, a lot of owners have concluded the requirement is theoretical. It is not. The CRA has confirmed that certain reportable bare trusts will be required to file for taxation years ending on or after December 31, 2026, with exceptions set out in subsection 150(1.31).
These arrangements are more common at this size than people expect. A property held in one shareholder's name for the corporation. A nominee holding title on a commercial lease. An account opened in a parent's name for a family member. Several of the exceptions are broad, including arrangements where all the beneficiaries are also the legal owners, certain family arrangements involving property that could be designated a principal residence, partnership property, and property held under court order. The point is not that everything files. It is that the analysis has to be done, arrangement by arrangement, before March.
The penalties are why this deserves attention. Failing to file a T3 where no tax is owing runs $25 a day, minimum $100 and maximum $2,500. Where the failure is knowing or the result of gross negligence, the penalty is the greater of $2,500 and 5% of the highest fair market value of the property the trust held during the year. On a $1.8 million property, that is $90,000 for a return nobody knew they had to file.
If your structure includes a family trust, our explainer on what a trust is and how the reporting rules have moved is the background reading. The action item for this fall is a list of every arrangement where legal title and beneficial ownership do not match.
GST/HST: Your Deadline Depends on a Number You May Have Outgrown
- Monthly and quarterly filers, file and pay: one month after the reporting period ends. For the quarter ending December 31, 2026, that is February 1, 2027 (January 31 is a Sunday)
- Annual filers, file and pay: three months after fiscal year-end. For a December 31, 2026 year-end, March 31, 2027
- Annual filers who are sole proprietors with a December 31 year-end, pay: April 30, 2027
- Same filers, file: June 15, 2027
- Annual filer instalments (December 31 year-end): April 30, August 2, November 1, 2027 and January 31, 2028
Which set applies is generally determined from annual taxable supplies made in Canada during the preceding fiscal year (or preceding 4 quarters). Up to $1.5 million, the assigned period is annual. Above $1.5 million and up to $6 million, it is quarterly. Above $6 million, it is monthly. A registrant may elect to report more frequently.
The sole proprietor split is the same trap as the personal return: pay in April, file in June, and the two get confused every year.
Two things about GST/HST consistently cost money at this revenue level.
The first is that growth can require a more frequent reporting period under the statutory thresholds. A calendar-year company whose relevant annual taxable supplies exceeded $1.5 million in 2025 is generally a quarterly filer for 2026; continuing to file annually can therefore leave it late for multiple periods. The reverse is different: if revenue drops below a threshold, the CRA does not move the registrant back automatically. An eligible registrant must elect to use the less frequent period.
The second is instalments. An annual filer whose net tax for the previous fiscal year was $3,000 or more has to make quarterly instalment payments in the current year, due one month after each fiscal quarter. Annual filers who have never made an instalment payment and have just crossed $3,000 of net tax are the most common source of unexpected GST/HST interest we see. If sales tax mechanics are a live issue for you, the Canadian sales tax rules business owners learn too late covers the substantive side.
Instalments: The Only Item on This List You Can Still Change
- Individuals: March 15, June 15, September 15 and December 15, in 2026 and again in 2027
- Farmers and fishers: one payment, December 31
- Corporations, monthly: one month less a day from the start of the tax year, then the same day each month
- Corporations, quarterly (eligible small CCPCs): one quarter less a day from the start of the tax year. For a calendar-year corporation, March 31, June 30, September 30 and December 31
Individuals
You have to pay instalments for 2026 if your net tax owing is more than $3,000 this year ($1,800 if you are a Quebec resident) and it was also more than that threshold in either 2025 or 2024. Both conditions have to be true.
The CRA offers three ways to calculate: the no-calculation option, which uses the amounts on the reminder the CRA sends based on your last assessed return; the prior-year option, based on your 2025 return; and the current-year option, based on what you actually expect to owe for 2026.
That third option is the fall planning lever, and it is underused. An owner who took a $400,000 dividend in 2025 and is taking nothing like it in 2026 is being asked, on a reminder generated from 2025, to prepay tax on income that is not coming. Switching to the current-year option for the September 15th and December 15th payments can free up meaningful cash. The trade-off is worth stating plainly: estimate low and end up owing more, and instalment interest applies, with a further penalty where instalment interest for the year exceeds $1,000. The current-year option rewards an accurate forecast and punishes an optimistic one.
Corporations
A corporation does not have to pay instalments at all if its tax payable is $3,000 or less in either the current or the previous year, and there is no instalment requirement in the first tax year after incorporation.
A small CCPC can pay quarterly instead of monthly if it meets four conditions: it claimed the small business deduction in the current or previous year, its taxable income together with associated corporations is $500,000 or less in the current or previous year, its combined taxable capital employed in Canada is $10 million or less, and it has a perfect compliance history over the previous twelve months, meaning every GST/HST return, payroll remittance and income tax return filed and paid on time.
That last condition can cause issues because it turns a small administrative slip into a cash flow event. Miss one payroll remittance in June and the corporation stops qualifying for quarterly instalments, moving to monthly from the following quarter. Nothing about the total tax changed. The pattern of when you have to fund it changed completely, because of something a bookkeeper missed. Keeping remittances clean is not only about avoiding penalties, which is one reason we treat payroll compliance as a year-round discipline rather than a monthly task.
One mechanical detail is worth knowing on the corporate side. Instalment interest is calculated using the offset method, so paying an instalment early earns credit interest that offsets a later shortfall. A corporation expecting a lumpy year can use that deliberately rather than paying twelve identical amounts and hoping. And one operational note: business payments over $10,000 are required to be made electronically, and paying by cheque instead can attract a penalty.
What to Do Between Now and December 31
Four things, none of which take long.
Build the actual calendar for your group.
Every entity, every obligation, every date, derived from that entity's year-end and last year's numbers rather than copied from last year's calendar. A holdco or a trust goes on the same page as the opco.
Re-run the balance-due-day test for each corporation.
Was last year's taxable income within the business limit, and was the small business deduction claimed? If either answer is no, your balance is due at two months, not three.
Decide your personal instalment approach for the rest of the year deliberately.
If 2026 income is materially different from 2025, look at the current-year option before the September and December payments rather than after.
List every arrangement where legal title and beneficial ownership do not line up.
That is your bare trust list, and it needs resolving well before March 31st.
This is work that has to happen before the year closes, which is exactly why it gets pushed into a quarter when nobody has time for it. The companies that never have a deadline problem do not have better memories. They have a finance function that keeps the calendar as a standing item and looks at it in October, when the answers can still change. If your structure has grown past what a list of dates can hold, that is usually the signal it is time for year-end planning that decides something rather than a return that reports what already happened.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is the personal tax filing deadline in Canada for 2027?
For the 2026 tax year, most individuals must file and pay by April 30, 2027. Sole proprietors and their spouses have until June 15, 2027 to file, but any balance owing is still due April 30, 2027.
When is a corporate tax return due in Canada?
A T2 return is due six months after the corporation's tax year-end. For a December 31, 2026 year-end, that is June 30, 2027. The balance of tax is due earlier: two months after year-end, or three months for a CCPC that claimed the small business deduction and whose previous-year taxable income did not exceed its business limit.
When is the T3 trust return deadline?
90 days after the trust's tax year-end. For a December 31, 2026 year-end, the return, the balance owing and the T3 slips are all due March 31, 2027.
Do bare trusts have to file a T3 return for 2026?
Certain reportable bare trusts are required to file for taxation years ending on or after December 31, 2026, following relief for 2023, 2024 and 2025. Several exceptions apply, including qualifying arrangements where all beneficiaries are also legal owners. If you hold property in one name for another party's benefit, the analysis should be done before March 31, 2027.
When are GST/HST returns due in Canada?
Monthly and quarterly filers file and pay one month after the end of the reporting period. Annual filers file and pay three months after their fiscal year-end, except sole proprietors with a December 31st fiscal year-end, who pay by April 30th and file by June 15th.
Who has to pay tax instalments in Canada?
Individuals whose net tax owing exceeds $3,000 in the current year and in either of the two prior years ($1,800 for Quebec residents). Corporations generally pay instalments unless tax payable is $3,000 or less in the current or previous year, or it is the corporation's first tax year. Annual GST/HST filers pay quarterly instalments when the previous year's net tax was $3,000 or more.
What is the penalty for filing taxes late in Canada?
For both personal and corporate returns, the ordinary late-filing penalty is 5% of the unpaid balance plus 1% for each complete month late, to a maximum of 12 months. Where a failure-to-file penalty was assessed for any of the previous three tax years, and CRA issued a formal demand to file, it rises to 10% plus 2% per month for up to 20 months. Interest compounds daily on unpaid amounts at the prescribed rate. The overdue-tax rate is 7% for the fourth quarter of 2026; rates applicable in 2027 will be announced quarterly.
