CRA remittance due dates: When to pay payroll deductions in Canada

A bakery owner with six staff received a short message from their bookkeeper on 16 February with the subject line “Quick one.” It turned out to be the first real lesson in CRA remittance due dates. The owner had always believed payroll was handled. Pay stubs went out on time, and income tax, Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Employment Insurance (EI) deductions came off every paycheque without any fuss. What they had missed was the second half of the process. The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) expects those withheld amounts, plus the employer’s share of CPP and EI, to arrive on a schedule of its own. The January payment had been due on 15 February, and the bookkeeper’s note said it was now late.

The bakery in this example is hypothetical, but the mistake is an easy one to make. The payroll system had calculated every deduction correctly, and nothing suggested a second deadline existed. Pay day feels like the end of the process, so a date that comes after it can seem like paperwork that belongs to somebody else. For the CRA, pay day is only the first step. This guide walks through how remittance schedules work, why numbers from two years ago decide your deadlines, and what the penalties look like when a date slips.

What you are actually sending

Source deductions are the amounts you take from each employee’s pay for income tax, CPP and EI. On top of those, you owe your own share of CPP and EI as the employer. Once those amounts exist, you are holding them for the government until you pay them over. That payment is called a remittance, and it is a separate obligation from the T4 slips and year-end reporting that come later. Keeping the two apart is the first habit worth building.

CRA remittance due dates depend on your remitter type

Plenty of owners assume everyone runs on one timetable, but the CRA sorts employers into categories, as its guidance on when to remit explains. Each category, called a remitter type, sets how often you remit and when each payment is due. For most employers, the assignment comes from the average monthly withholding amount (AMWA) of two calendar years earlier. The AMWA is your total required remittances for a calendar year, divided by the number of months, up to 12, in which you had a remittance to make. So the schedule you follow in 2026 traces back to what you withheld in 2024.

The table reads like a rulebook, but the pattern is simple. Higher withholding means more frequent payments and shorter windows. Lower withholding gives smaller employers a longer runway, provided their compliance history stays spotless. You can check your current remitter type through CRA sign-in services, which is the quickest way to stop guessing.

Would it help to see your remittance schedule built into each pay run?

Regular remitters pay by the 15th of the following month

Regular remitting is where many small employers land. The remitting period is the calendar month, so every month’s deductions have one deadline: the 15th of the next month. The January amounts were due 15 February, and the February amounts were due 15 March. The rule does not shift with the season or the size of a particular pay run.

The simplicity is what makes it easy to miss. Each pay run feels like a complete event, with stubs sent, deposits landed and staff thanked. The remittance clock keeps running after all of that, and nothing about the pay run itself signals when it stops.

Quarterly remitting suits smaller, steadier payrolls

Smaller employers can remit quarterly instead of monthly. Quarterly remitters report on four periods: January to March, April to June, July to September and October to December. Each period’s payment is due on the 15th of the month after the quarter closes, which means 15 April, 15 July, 15 October and 15 January.

Existing employers qualify when the account has been open for at least 12 months, the AMWA from two calendar years earlier stayed under $3,000, and the account keeps a perfect compliance record. Brand-new employers qualify when their monthly withholding stays under $1,000, and the account keeps the same compliance record. If the monthly amount climbs past that threshold, a new employer moves to regular remitting starting in the next calendar quarter.

A perfect compliance record means no late remittances or late-remitting penalties, no failure-to-remit or failure-to-deduct penalties, and no overdue T4-type information returns over the previous 12 months. If you also hold a Goods and Services Tax (GST) or Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) account, it needs no balance owing, no overdue returns and no credit balance under a refund hold. One late payment can move a quarterly remitter back to monthly payments, which is reason enough to protect that clean record.

Accelerated remitters have split deadlines

Larger payrolls run on a faster timetable. Employers with an AMWA from $25,000 to $99,999.99 are accelerated remitters at threshold 1, and they remit up to twice a month. Payments for deductions made from the 1st to the 15th are due on the 25th of the same month, and payments for the 16th to the end of the month are due on the 10th of the next month. Employers with an AMWA of $100,000 or more fall under threshold 2, which divides the month into four periods, with each payment due on the third working day after its period closes.

Growth can change your remitter type in a later year, and the new calendar can feel tighter than the old one. If your payroll has grown quickly, check your AMWA before the new schedule arrives.

Do weekends and holidays change the deadline?

They can. If a due date falls on a Saturday, a Sunday or a public holiday the CRA recognizes, the payment counts as on time when the CRA receives it, or a Canadian financial institution processes it, on or before the next business day. Your payment method decides how the date is counted. Internet and telephone banking count from the day the bank credits the CRA. Payments made in person at a financial institution count from the date stamped on the remittance voucher, and mailed payments count from the day the CRA receives them. Mail takes time, so build that into your calendar if you still send cheques.

What happens when a payment is late

The CRA charges a penalty and interest when a remittance is late or missing, and the penalty grows with the delay. Payments one to three days late attract 3%, four or five days late attract 5% and six or seven days late attract 7%. More than seven days late, or nothing remitted at all, moves the penalty to 10%. A second penalty in the same calendar year can climb to 20% when the CRA finds the failures were knowing or grossly negligent. The penalty applies to the late amount, not to the whole payroll.

The penalty comes with a threshold. The CRA charges it on late amounts over $500, while smaller amounts are penalized only when the failure is knowing or grossly negligent. On top of any penalty, interest runs from the day the payment was due. The CRA sets the rate each calendar quarter, compounds it daily and applies it to unpaid penalties too.

Take an illustrative case. A regular remitter owes $4,000 for the month and sends it five days after the due date. At 5%, the penalty is $200 before any interest. That figure feels manageable, which is part of the trap. Late payments tend to repeat once the first one feels survivable, and a repeat is where the cost climbs.

If late penalties feel like a risk you’d rather not carry, a short walkthrough is a good next step.

Nil remittances and final remittances

Some months have no payroll at all. If you have no employees, or only seasonal workers, you still report a nil remittance by your due date. Tell the CRA when you expect to resume remitting, and if you don’t know yet, give an estimate. If you give no date, the CRA expects you to resume the following month or quarter. Don’t file a nil report for a period in which you made deductions.

Closing or changing the business triggers its own clock. A final remittance is due within seven calendar days when the business stops operating, a sole proprietor or partner dies, the legal status changes, the business enters bankruptcy or receivership, or the business is restructured, reorganized or amalgamated.

How Quebec changes the picture

Quebec runs a parallel system. Quebec Pension Plan (QPP) and Quebec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP) amounts, along with Quebec income tax, go through Revenu Québec rather than the CRA. Federal income tax and EI still go to the CRA. If you have employees working in Quebec, this guide covers only the federal side, so check Revenu Québec’s remittance rules alongside the CRA schedule.

Software can help you keep the calendar

Moving payroll onto a platform that handles the arithmetic and the scheduling is one way to take pressure off the deadlines. Software works inside the CRA’s rules, and the CRA still assigns your remitter type. What good software does is put each due date in front of you before it arrives.

Employment Hero is built for Canadian businesses. It calculates source deductions for federal and provincial income tax, CPP, the second CPP contribution (CPP2) and EI, and it prepares your CRA remittance schedule on your filing cadence, whether monthly, quarterly or accelerated. For employers who would rather hand off the work, Managed Payroll places the job with specialists who hold the Payroll Compliance Professional (PCP) designation. They run processing, year-end reconciliation and CRA filing on the client’s behalf. For more on the platform’s compliance tools, see payroll compliance, and for the broader picture, the Canadian payroll guide covers tax deductions, pay schedules, benefits and compliance rules in one place.

Making the deadline routine

A workable routine doesn’t need to be elaborate. Write your remitter type somewhere you’ll see it, confirm it through CRA sign-in services, and set two reminders each month. One goes off a few days before the due date to confirm the payment is scheduled, and the other goes off on the due date to check that it has cleared. The steps are simple, and they work the same way for every remitter type.

The logic behind CRA remittance due dates stays consistent once you know three things: your remitter type, the period your deductions cover and the day a payment counts as on time. Two years of withholding set the schedule, and the period, not the payday, sets the deadline. Weekends and holidays can push a due date to the next business day, but late payments carry penalties that climb with every stretch of delay.

Once the dates are known, the rest is repetition. A payroll system that prepares the schedule can make that repetition easier to keep, and the CRA’s guidance remains the place to check whenever your circumstances change.

Ready to stop tracking CRA deadlines from memory?