Every CRA deadline an incorporated owner actually has

Your corporation’s T2, its income tax return, is due six months after the end of its fiscal year. The tax itself is due sooner: generally two months after year-end, or three for many CCPCs that claimed the small-business deduction. The deadline that costs money arrives before the deadline that reminds you it exists, which is why owners get surprised in March by a bill nobody has finished calculating.

Everything else hangs off three facts: your fiscal year-end · how the corporation pays you · whether it’s registered for GST/HST. Our deadlines table is the short version; this is the same year with the reasoning attached.

The money is due before the return is

Two dates doing two different jobs. The balance-due date is when the corporation’s tax has to be in the CRA’s hands; the filing due date is when the return that calculates it has to be filed. They sit three or four months apart.

Interest on an unpaid balance starts the day after the balance-due date, compounds daily, and runs at a prescribed rate the CRA resets quarterly. Filing late adds a separate penalty: a percentage of the unpaid tax the moment the return is late, a further percentage for each full month it stays late, and a harsher version for repeat offenders. The two run independently — a balance paid on time with the return filed late still draws the penalty.

A due date landing on a weekend or a public holiday the CRA recognizes is generally met if the return or payment arrives the next business day.

February is the slip crunch, and it runs on the calendar year

T4s (employment-income slips) and T5s (dividend slips) are filed with the CRA and given to the employee or shareholder by the last day of February, covering the calendar year just ended. Late information returns generally carry a per-slip penalty, which is how a nine-person payroll turns one forgotten date into a real number.

What catches incorporated owners is the calendar-year bit. Your corporation may have a June 30 year-end, but the slips reporting what it paid you cover January to December regardless. So how you were paid last year has to be settled by the last day of February, months ahead of the corporate return that will report the same transactions. December through February is when prior-year compensation gets locked, because the slip is the record. Slips, remittances and payroll accounts are GST/HST and payroll work.

If construction is your main business, add the T5018, the information return for payments to subcontractors. It’s due six months after the end of the reporting period you chose, calendar year or fiscal period, and the CRA generally expects you to stay on the one you picked. Contractors and trades run two slip calendars, not one.

April 30 is a payment date; June 15 is only sometimes yours

Your personal return, the T1, is due April 30 for most individuals, and any balance you owe personally is due April 30 whenever you file. If you or your spouse or common-law partner carried on a business during the year, the filing deadline moves to June 15 — the payment deadline does not move with it.

Incorporated owners routinely assume June 15 is theirs. Often it isn’t. Drawing salary or dividends from your own corporation is not, by itself, carrying on a business personally; the extension generally turns on unincorporated business income, such as a side practice, a partnership interest, or contract work invoiced outside the company. If everything you earn arrives as a T4 or a T5 from your corporation, plan on April 30 for both.

The corporate pair: two or three months, then six

The T2 is due six months after year-end. June 30 for a December 31 year-end, September 30 for a March 31 one.

The balance is generally due two months after year-end. Many CCPCs that claimed the small-business deduction get a third month instead, subject to conditions — the corporation’s status through the year and its associated group both matter, so last year’s answer isn’t proof of this year’s. That deduction is also why the balance is often smaller than owners brace for: for 2026, eligible CCPCs pay a federal rate of 9% on the first C$500,000 of active business income. Provincial rates sit on top and differ by province.

Two provinces add filings rather than only rates. Alberta requires its own AT1 corporate return and Quebec requires separate filings with Revenu Québec, each on its own calendar. The T2, the provincial return and the instalment schedule are business and corporate tax.

GST/HST keeps its own calendar

Monthly and quarterly filers file and pay one month after the reporting period ends. Annual filers generally have three months after their fiscal year-end, with one exception: an individual who files annually with a December 31 year-end has until June 15 to file, with payment still due April 30.

Annual filers can also owe GST/HST instalments, quarterly, once the prior year’s net tax passes a threshold the CRA sets. That surprises people who elected annual filing specifically to have fewer dates to remember.

Instalments are the deadline nobody diarizes

An instalment is a prepayment of a bill that hasn’t been calculated. No event triggers it and no return arrives; nothing lands in the mail except a reminder that may or may not match your year.

Most corporations pay monthly, due the last day of each month of the tax year. Eligible small CCPCs with a clean compliance history can generally pay quarterly instead. Instalments are generally not required where the corporation’s total tax payable for the year is C$3,000 or less.

On your own return, the CRA generally asks for instalments once your net tax owing is more than C$3,000 (C$1,800 for Quebec residents) in the current year and in either of the two years before it. They fall due March 15, June 15, September 15 and December 15. Reminders go out in February and August, calculated from returns already filed. They are an estimate, not a bill, and the year your income changes shape is the year they will be wrong. Miss or underpay and interest accrues on the shortfall; once that interest is large enough, a further penalty applies on top.

A worked example: the second-year squeeze

Round numbers, December 31 year-end. Year one is your corporation’s first profitable year, and it owes C$60,000 of tax. No instalments were required, because there was no prior-year tax to base them on, so nothing left the bank account all year. The C$60,000 comes due at the end of February or March, and the T2 on June 30.

Year two is identical on the income statement. Now instalments apply: roughly C$5,000 a month, due the last day of each month. In the first quarter the corporation pays three instalments of C$5,000 plus the year-one balance of C$60,000. That is C$75,000 in ninety days, on profit that produced a C$60,000 bill the year before. Nothing went wrong; the calendar caught up. (The instalment base can be built from the current year’s estimate, the prior year, or the two before that; one-twelfth of the expected bill is the plain version.)

A December 31 year-end, laid out

These are the general rules. Your year-end, filer type and province set your actual dates, and several carry exceptions that only surface once someone reads your facts.

What Cadence does

We build the filing calendar from your year-end, your remitter type and your GST/HST period during onboarding, then track it rather than reminding you to. Instalments get recalculated when the year changes shape instead of coasting on last year’s figure, and a quarterly tax estimate means the balance-due date is not the first time you see the number. Corporate returns and instalment schedules sit in business and corporate tax; slips, remittances and payroll accounts sit in GST/HST and payroll. The fee covering all of it is agreed at the estimate; how fees are set is on the pricing page.