T4, T4A and T5 slips: deadlines, who gets which, and what late filing costs

Which slip is which

Three slips cover the situations most incorporated owners run into. They report different kinds of payments, but they share almost the same deadline and penalty regime.

• T4 — Statement of Remuneration Paid. Reports employment income: salary, wages, bonuses and taxable benefits you paid to employees, including yourself if you take a salary through payroll.
• T5 — Statement of Investment Income. Reports investment income, including the dividends your corporation pays you. If you pay yourself by dividend rather than salary, this is your slip.
• T4A — Statement of Pension, Retirement, Annuity, and Other Income. A catch-all for various other payments, such as certain fees for services, self-employed commissions, and pension or annuity income.

Note that if you pay construction subcontractors, you may instead owe a T5018, which has its own rules and a different reporting period — we cover that in our T5018 guide.

The one deadline to remember

For T4, T4A and T5 slips, both the deadline to give the recipient their copy and the deadline to file the return with CRA are the same: the last day of February following the calendar year the slips apply to. If that date falls on a weekend or a public holiday, the deadline moves to the next business day. Because payroll and dividend reporting share this date, late February is a genuine crunch for owner-managed corporations — it’s worth preparing slips in January rather than the last week of February.

You probably have to file electronically

If you file more than five information returns (slips) of a single type for a calendar year, CRA requires you to file them electronically — by Web Forms or Internet file transfer — rather than on paper. File on paper when you weren’t allowed to, and there’s a penalty: $125 for 6 to 50 slips of a type, rising from there. For a small corporation with only a handful of slips this rarely bites, but it’s worth knowing the threshold is low.

What late filing actually costs

There are two separate penalties, and they can both apply.

First, for filing the information return late, the penalty is the greater of $100 and an amount based on how many slips are late and how many days late they are (up to 100 days):

Second, and separately, if you don’t give an employee their T4 slip by the deadline, CRA can charge $25 per day for each slip not given, with a minimum penalty of $100 and a maximum of $2,500. That penalty is about the employee’s copy, not the CRA filing — so you can be penalized twice for the same slip if you miss both.

The owner-manager angle

Even a one-person corporation usually has at least one slip to file: a T4 if you pay yourself a salary, or a T5 if you pay yourself dividends. It’s easy to treat these as an afterthought once the busy corporate year-end is behind you, but the February slip deadline is often earlier than your corporate tax deadline, and the penalties start at a flat $100 even for a single late slip. Building slip preparation into your January routine — alongside reconciling the prior year’s books — is the simplest way to avoid an entirely avoidable penalty.

This article is general information for Canadian business owners and is current as of July 2026. It is not tax, legal or accounting advice, and it does not create a client relationship. Tax rules change and your situation is unique — please speak with a CPA before acting on anything here.

Slip deadlines are the same in every province. We prepare and file them for owners across Canada, including as an working with us from Vancouver, CPA for Toronto owners, Ottawa small business accountant, Calgary, accountant in Edmonton and Winnipeg business owners.

Two payroll items run on their own clocks alongside the slips. A record of employment is due within days of an interruption of earnings, not at year-end. And anything you gave an employee that counts as a benefit has to be valued and reported — see taxable vs non-taxable benefits.

Knowing the deadline is half of it; the other half is making sure the slips agree with what was remitted. The payroll year-end checklist covers the reconciliation and the electronic filing threshold.

One slip sits outside the February run entirely. Amounts paid or credited to a non-resident are reported on an NR4, due at the end of March — see NR4 slips and Part XIII tax.