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:
- How is automatic tax filing different from the current regime?
- Why do we need automatic tax filing?
- Where do barriers and complexity remain?
- Where is there room for improvement?
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