T4A: Statement of Pension, Retirement, Annuity, and Other Income
Reviewed by EverStone CPA · August 2026
Quick answer: The T4A reports payments that are not salary — for small businesses, most often fees paid to self-employed contractors. Under CRA administrative policy a slip is required when you deducted tax or when the year’s payments to one payee passed $500, and the return is due by the last day of February.
What the form is
The T4A is the catch-all slip of the payroll system — pensions, self-employed commissions, research grants and, most relevantly for small business, fees or other amounts for services in box 048.
The CRA’s stated rule for when a payer must issue one: you deducted tax from any payment, or the payment is not on the exceptions list and the total of all payments in the calendar year was more than $500 under the CRA administrative policy.
Box 048 amounts exclude GST/HST. The CRA is currently not assessing penalties for incomplete box 048 reporting except under its new policy for the trucking industry — but the reporting obligation itself stands, and enforcement policies change.
Who files it
Any business that paid self-employed individuals or unincorporated contractors for services — consultants, cleaners, designers, bookkeepers — where the year’s total passed $500. Construction businesses use the T5018 for construction subcontractors instead.
Payers of pensions, retiring allowances, RESP payments and similar amounts file T4As too, each with its own box and its own rules on the same slip.
The form at a glance
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Who files | Payers of pensions, fees for services and other non-salary amounts |
| Policy threshold | More than $500 to a payee in the calendar year, or any payment where tax was deducted |
| Fees for services | Box 048, excluding GST/HST |
| Due | Last day of February following the calendar year |
| Paper filing | More than 5 slips must be Internet-filed |
What to have ready before you file
Most of the delay on these is not the form, it is assembling what the form asks for. Have each payee’s legal name, address and SIN or business number, the total paid per payee split by type — fees for services, commissions, other income — and your payroll program account number, which T4A filing requires even where no salary payroll is run to hand before starting.
Gathering it first also surfaces the problems early — a missing account number, a balance nobody has actually calculated, a date that does not line up — while there is still time to fix them rather than after a filing has been rejected.
What catches people out
The slip does not settle employment status. Issuing a T4A to someone who works like an employee does not make them a contractor — the CRA decides classification on the facts, and the T4A trail is often what starts the review.
Fees for services belong in box 048, not code 028. The CRA says so explicitly — code 028 is for amounts that fit nowhere else, and services have a box of their own.
Trucking businesses are the live enforcement file: for 2025 and later years the CRA is assessing penalties for unreported fees for services over $500 paid to CCPCs in the trucking industry. The policy names one sector today; the mechanism generalises.
Under the CRA’s administrative policy a T4A is required when you deducted tax from a payment, or when total payments to one payee passed $500 in the calendar year — and fees for services go in box 048, excluding GST/HST, not in the catch-all code 028.
How it is filed
T4A slips and the summary are filed by the last day of February following the calendar year, with copies to each recipient by the same date. More than five slips means mandatory Internet filing. Fees for services are reported excluding GST/HST in box 048.
Whichever route applies, keep the filed copies and the working papers behind them together. A slip is only as defensible as the records that show how its boxes were calculated, and those records are what a review asks for rather than the slip itself.
Common questions
Do I issue a T4A to an incorporated contractor?+
Does the $500 include GST?+
When are T4As due?+
T4A or T5018?+
Where this comes from
- CRA — T4A slip: information for payers
- CRA — When to file information returns
- CRA — Penalty for accepting a late, amended or revoked election
General information current as of August 2026, not advice for your situation. Filing deadlines are unforgiving — confirm yours before you file. Please speak with a CPA about your circumstances.
Related reading
- Employee vs contractor: how the CRA decides
- The payroll quick card
- Business number program accounts
- All CRA forms we cover
Other CRA forms
Who does this work
T4As fall out of clean books. If contractor payments are coded to their own accounts through the year, February is a report, not a project — and the worker-classification question behind each slip gets asked once, at onboarding, rather than at a CRA review.
If that is where you are, the service page for bookkeeping and payroll sets out what the engagement covers and how it is quoted.
These deadlines are date-driven and unforgiving. Email us before the deadline rather than after — we quote the work in writing first.
Email us about T4A