By Gillian Petit | Institute for Research on Public Policy

Budget 2025 built on a previous announcement to transition to “automated federal benefits” to make it easier for Canadians to file tax returns and access financial benefits. Starting in the 2026 tax year, pre-filled tax returns will be available on the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA’s) My Account online filing system and automatically filed for about one million lower-income individuals with simple tax situations. This offering will be scaled up to about 5.5 million individuals for the 2028 tax year.

This commentary addresses four questions:

  1. How is automatic tax filing different from the current regime?
  2. Why do we need automatic tax filing?
  3. Where do barriers and complexity remain?
  4. Where is there room for improvement?
Full article on the IRPP website

Related reading

Mark Carney’s budget is a big bet. It will take years to see if it pays off

A budget’s long-term success depends on bringing the public along, and building trust with the very households, corporations and organizations the government needs to implement its budget decisions. That is especially true of this one.

Carney’s first budget: a trillion-dollar investment goal propped up by capital spending

Mark Carney promised us the world in the lead-up to his first budget as prime minister – a generational, Canada-first plan that would set us all up for a prosperous future.

Baseball metaphors aside, this budget will be game-changing

By this time next week, the World Series will be behind us and pundits across the land will be liberated from using tortured and gratuitous baseball metaphors to explain and enlighten every element of their thinking.

Get in Touch

Have feedback on the work we are doing? Interested in collaborating? We want to hear from you.

Get in touch

Stay Connected

<Mailchimp Subscribe form here>

Through solid, independent research and non-partisan public engagement, we aim to encourage fresh thinking that leads to practical solutions on tax policy.

Subscribe