Article content

After you file your 2025 tax return, you’ll soon receive a Notice of Assessment (NOA) from the Canada Revenue Agency. Starting this year, you can view your digital NOA immediately in CRA’s My Account after the CRA receives and processes your return. (You can no longer view it in your tax software as in prior years.)

Article content

Once you get your NOA, take a close look to verify that the CRA has assessed your tax return the way you expected. If not, you have the formal right to object and, ultimately, to your day in court. But in order to protect your right to object and perhaps take your matter to the Tax Court of Canada, or even beyond, you’ll need to make sure you file a valid and timely notice of objection by the deadline.

Article content

Article content

Article content

There are two ways to object. The simplest is to file your objection online by logging onto the CRA’s My Account for individuals, and selecting “File my formal dispute.” You’ll be assigned a case number that you’ll need to include when submitting documents, which can also be uploaded online.

Article content

Article content

If you prefer, you can file your objection by mail by printing, completing and sending Form T400A, Objection – Income Tax Act to the chief of appeals at your Appeals Intake Centre. If you’d rather not use the T400A, you can simply mail the CRA a signed letter that clearly outlines the facts and reasons for your objection.

Article content

In recent years, the CRA has added a “Progress Tracker” to My Account, where you can view the status of files that you have submitted to the CRA, including your objection. It will show the date your objection was received, and then the date that an initial screening was completed.

Article content

For individual taxpayers, the deadline for filing an objection is one year from the normal filing due date or 90 days after the date printed on the NOA, whichever is later. Practically speaking, that means if you file your 2025 return by the April 30, 2026, deadline, and you receive your NOA this spring, you have until April 30, 2027 to file an objection.

Article content

Article content

If you miss the deadline, you can still apply to the CRA for an extension within one year of the deadline. That application must include the reasons you didn’t object before the deadline and be addressed to the Chief of Appeals at an Appeals Intake Centre. You’ll need to demonstrate that you were unable to object within the time limit, you were unable to instruct someone else to act for you, you had a “bona fide intention to object,” it would be “just and equitable” to extend the deadline, and that your application was made as soon as circumstances permitted.

Article content

Article content

Should the CRA deny your application, or, if you don’t receive a response from the CRA within 90 days, you may further appeal to the Tax Court of Canada. And, if the Tax Court denies your application, you can appeal that decision to the Federal Court of Appeal, which is what one taxpayer did earlier this month.

Article content

The taxpayer is a Registered Indian pursuant to the Indian Act, and a member of the Mohawk Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy who resides in Mohawk Territory. The taxpayer said he paid income taxes in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, but stated that this tax was paid in error, and thus he should be entitled to a refund.