Automatic tax filing: Welcome news for lower-income Canadians, but there’s more to do

November 7, 2025In Helpful Reads
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
automatic tax filing

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