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Tax season officially ended on April 30, which was the general deadline for most Canadians to file their 2025 personal tax returns. (Those with self-employment income, and their spouse or partner, have until June 15 to file.) For the most part, it was smooth sailing, and the 2026 filing season didn’t pose any extraordinary hiccups or technical glitches, as we have seen in prior years.

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Here are some filing statistics based on this year’s tax season, why you should still file if you have yet to do so, and what to do if you need to change the return you just filed.

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The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) filing stats show that 29.7 million tax returns were filed as of May 10, 95 per cent of them online. The CRA issued nearly 17 million refunds, totalling more than $39 billion, with an average refund of $2,282. More than 14 million individuals (including me) used the Auto-fill my return service to fill in parts of their 2025 tax return.

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During this year’s official filing season, which ran Feb. 23 to April 30, the CRA’s contact centres received more than 6.5 million calls, or about 120,000 calls per day. Despite this high volume, the agency answered an average of more than 75 per cent of unique callers, reaching a peak of 83 per cent. Service levels were regularly reported online so that Canadians knew how long they would have to wait when calling.

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The use of digital services continued to grow in 2026, with about 23 million users currently registered for a CRA account, enabling them to do things like to track their tax return status, view notices, access live agent support. The CRA also added new account recovery features, making it easier for Canadians who were locked out to regain access to their CRA account online. The CRA’s generative AI chatbot held more than 445,000 chat sessions, allowing users to get answers to more than 657,000 tax-related questions.

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This past season, more than 480,000 tax returns were filed through the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program (to March 31), which continues to serve communities across Canada with renewed grant funding for eligible organizations over the next three years. Lower-income Canadians with a simple tax situation were able to use SimpleFile services (digitally or by phone) to file their 2025 returns, with more than 73,000 tax returns filed this way.

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If you’re one of the Canadians who hasn’t yet filed a return yet for 2025, consider doing so even if you had minimal or zero income and thus owe no tax, to be able to access valuable benefit and credit payments. If you don’t file, you could face delays in receiving benefit payments which begin in July, even if you’re otherwise eligible. These benefits include the newly renamed Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit (CGEB, formerly the GST/HST credit), with up to $1,890 available for a family of four this year, and up to $950 for a single individual. The first quarterly payment is scheduled for July 3. But, if you haven’t filed yet, or filed late, you won’t get your first CGEB payment until after your 2025 tax return is assessed.