File Your Taxes Yourself in Canada — Then Do This One Thing

For the majority of Canadians, filing your own tax return is the right approach. It is free (or nearly free), takes a few hours at most, and there is no reason to pay hundreds of dollars to have someone else enter the same numbers you have sitting in front of you. Here is how to do it confidently — plus the one step most people skip.

Why DIY Filing Makes Sense for Most Canadians

The CRA has worked hard to make self-filing accessible. If your situation involves employment income (T4), investment income, RRSP contributions, and common credits like the basic personal amount and childcare, you do not need a professional. The software handles the math automatically.

Wealthsimple Tax (formerly SimpleTax) is completely free and covers the vast majority of Canadian tax situations. TurboTax offers a free tier for straightforward returns. The CRA's own NETFILE service lets you submit electronically in minutes.

You may want a professional accountant if you own a corporation, have complex business income, went through a major financial event like selling a rental property, or immigrated or emigrated mid-year. For everyone else, self-filing is appropriate and worthwhile.

What to Gather Before You Start

The most common cause of a stressful tax filing experience is hunting for documents mid-session. Pull these together before you open your software:

  • T4 slips — Employment income from each employer
  • T5 slips — Investment income (dividends, interest)
  • T3 slips — Income from trusts and mutual funds
  • RRSP contribution receipts — From your financial institution
  • T2202 form — Tuition amounts from your institution
  • Charitable donation receipts — Any registered charity
  • Medical receipts — Prescriptions, dental, therapy, glasses
  • Childcare receipts — Name, address, and SIN of provider
  • T4E — EI benefits if you received them
  • T4A slips — Pension, CERB, or other benefits
  • Last year's Notice of Assessment — For carryforward amounts

Most of these are available in your CRA My Account under the Auto-fill my return (AFR) service, which can pre-populate much of your return automatically. This is one of the most underused features available to Canadian filers.

Choosing the Right Free Software

For most Canadians, the choice comes down to two options:

Wealthsimple Tax is genuinely free for all return types, including self-employment and rental income. It uses a smart interview format that guides you through questions in plain language. It is owned by Wealthsimple and integrates well with their investment accounts, but you do not need to be a Wealthsimple customer to use it. Pay-what-you-want pricing means you can file for $0.

TurboTax Free covers straightforward returns but charges for returns involving self-employment, rental income, or investment sales. The paid tiers start around $20–25 and include more guided support. TurboTax has the most polished step-by-step experience and is the most familiar brand in Canada.

H&R Block Online is free for simple returns and offers a paid review option where a tax professional checks your return before you file. Useful if you want a human checkpoint without paying for full preparation.

All three are CRA-certified and NETFILE-approved. The software you choose makes very little difference to your actual tax outcome — the result depends far more on what information you provide.

The One Step Most Filers Skip

Here is the part of self-filing that most people never do: reviewing their completed return against the full picture of what they could have claimed.

Tax software calculates correctly based on what you enter. But it cannot know about the dental work you paid for and forgot to add, the professional development course that qualifies for the Canada Training Credit, or the portion of your rent that could have been claimed under the detailed work-from-home method rather than the flat rate.

The CRA publishes over 400 deductions, credits, and optimizations. No one memorizes all of them. The gap between a correctly filed return and an optimized one averages about $2,900 according to H&R Block's research — and that gap comes not from mistakes, but from items that were never raised.

The good news: you can close that gap after filing. The CRA allows you to amend your return online through CRA My Account (using the ReFILE service) or by submitting a T1-ADJ form. You can go back up to 10 years. Any additional refund is paid to you with interest.

A Practical Filing Checklist

Before you submit, run through this quick checklist:

  • Did you work from home for more than 50% of the year for at least 4 weeks?
  • Did you move more than 40 km closer to a new job or school?
  • Did you pay for childcare — including day camps or grandparent care?
  • Did you pay out-of-pocket medical expenses (including glasses, therapy, dental)?
  • Did you make any charitable donations, even small ones?
  • Do you have unused tuition credits from prior years?
  • Did you pay interest on a government student loan?
  • Did you or your spouse turn 65 this year? (Age amount, pension splitting)
  • Do you have unused RRSP contribution room from prior years?
  • Did you receive any support amounts or pay spousal or child support?

If you said yes to any of these and did not claim them, your return may be leaving money on the table — even if it is technically correct.

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