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Notwithstanding the considerable complexity of the Canadian income tax system, there is one rule which applies to every individual taxpayer living in Canada, regardless of location, income, age, or circumstances. That rule is that income tax owed for a year must be paid, in full, on or before April 30 of the following year. This year, that means that individual income taxes owed for 2024 must be remitted to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) on or before Wednesday April 30, 2025. No exceptions and, absent extraordinary circumstances, no extensions.

Each spring, Canadian individual taxpayers must turn their attention to the filing of an individual income tax return for the tax year which ended on the previous December 31. And, while it’s doubtful that many of them do so with any degree of enthusiasm, the rate of compliance with the requirement to file a tax return in Canada is in fact very high. Last year, more than 33 million individual income tax returns (for the 2023 tax year) were filed with the Canada Revenue Agency.

The Canadian tax system casts a very wide net, in which each resident of Canada is taxable on all sources of income worldwide, with very few exceptions. In addition, Canada has what is known as a “self-assessing” system, in which Canadian residents voluntarily file an annual tax return on which they report all income earned during the previous year, claim any available deductions and credits, and pay any resulting amount of tax owing.