Tax Deadlines For Corporate Taxes And Personal Taxes

There's a lot of confusion when it comes to tax deadlines in Canada... 

Of the many questions we receive, the one that sticks out is always, "when are my taxes due?".  In order to plan for when your taxes are due, you need to first understand the category you fall into: A Corporation, an Employee or a Self-Employed/Sole proprietor.    

Corporation    

If your Corporation is a CCPC (Canadian Controlled Private Corporation) your corporate taxes are due 3 months after your year-end.  Your filing is due 6 months after year-end.  This means that your taxes are due before your filing.     Sounds confusing?  We thought so.  

To add more confusion to this, corporations can have any year-ends they choose (unlike individuals or self-employed business owners, who usually operate on a calendar year basis).     By the 3 month mark, your corporate accounting records may still not be up to date.  This will hinder your ability to know exactly what your taxes owing are.  

To get around this, you either have to:    

1) Ensure your accounting records are up to date and an accountant has completed your corporate tax return.  This will provide you with an accurate tax number.    

2) Estimate the amount and pay the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) by the 3 month deadline.  Once you prepare your corporate tax return in the future, if you realize your estimate was too high, the CRA will refund that difference back to you.  On the other hand, if your estimate is too low, you will have to "top-up" your tax payment in addition to interest and penalty charges.    

3) Make installments throughout the year (also an estimate), but less of a burden for you since the payments will be broken up over the year*    

* Please note that once you have corporate taxes owing of more than $3,000 in any one fiscal year, you will be required to make tax installments in the subsequent year.  Many corporations will take their corporate tax payable in the year and use that as a basis for their installments in the subsequent year (i.e. If a January to December Corporation owed $4,000 in 2014, then installments will be equal to $4,000 in 2015 and anything over and above that would have to be paid by March 31, 2016, which is their tax deadline for 2015).      

Your corporate tax filings are due 6 months after your year-end.    

Self-Employed    

As a sole proprietor/self-employed individual, your tax filing is due on June 15 (for the previous calendar year) but your tax payment is due April 30.  This scenario is similar to our corporate tax scenario above, whereby you need to make a tax payment prior to your filing (at which point you may not know what your taxes owing will be).  The same alternatives we discussed above exist for this scenario as well.    

Employee    

Much less confusion here.  Your tax filing and any taxes owing are due April 30.    

Some Other Information    

HST Annual Filing - Corporations - March 31    

HST Annual Filing - Self Employed - April 30    

HST Quarterly Filing - Corporate or Self Employed - Last day of the month following the quarter being filed    

HST Monthly Filing - Corporate or Self Employed - Last day of the month following the month being filed    

Payroll Filings (T4, T5 slips) - February 28 (for the previous calendar year)  

As always, there are exceptions and circumstances where these deadlines may not be the case, so please speak to an accounting professional to answer the age old question....when are my taxes due?