CRA pre-filled tax return 2027: what about Quebec?

In March 2027, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) will invite one million people to approve a tax return it has filled out for them. The service is free and takes a few clicks. But if you live in Quebec, approving that return settles only half the question: Quebec income tax is filed somewhere else.

What the CRA is launching in March 2027

The CRA calls it a pre-filled return. The idea is simple. The agency already holds most of your slips: the T4 your employer sends it, your benefit statements, the interest your bank reports. Instead of asking you to copy those figures over, it puts them into a return itself, then invites you to check it and approve it.

That is the point of the announcement on the The CRA is making tax filing easier page: "Starting March 2027, 1 million eligible individuals will get an invitation in their CRA account." That pre-filled return is used to file the 2026 tax year return — the one everybody files in the spring of 2027.

This is only the start. The schedule for automatic tax filing services plans to widen the service to up to 5.5 million eligible individuals by March 2029.

Another project is moving ahead in parallel, and it should not be confused with the first one: a pilot for deemed filing, announced in Budget 2025, where the CRA would file the return outright on your behalf instead of asking you to approve it. Its launch is announced for the fall of 2026, and it remains pending Royal Assent of the proposed legislation — in other words, pending its final adoption by Parliament.

Who gets an invitation

The invitation does not reach everyone. The CRA is aiming at the simplest tax situations, the ones where it already holds every figure. According to the same page, you may get an invitation if:

• you have a lower income and a simple, non-taxable situation;
• you filed a tax return for the 2025 tax year by October 31, 2026;
• you have a CRA account;
• you have chosen electronic mail as your correspondence preference.

The last two conditions are the easiest to forget, and they are the only ones entirely within your control. Opening a CRA account and switching your correspondence to electronic takes a few minutes, and it decides whether the March 2027 invitation reaches you at all.

Note the logic of the first condition: the service is for people who do not owe tax. If you have a balance to pay, you fall outside it. And if the tax withheld from your pay does not match your real situation, that is handled by a different mechanism, the one behind the TD1 and TP-1015.3 forms.

Why the Quebec return still has to be filed

Here is the point the federal pages do not make, because it is not their subject: everything the CRA describes concerns the federal return, and only that one.

The reason fits in one sentence from the Quebec income tax package published by the CRA: "Since Quebec administers its own tax laws, residents may have to file a separate provincial return."

Administering its own tax laws, in practice, means Quebec collects its income tax itself, with its own rates, its own credits and its own form. The CRA handles the federal side; Revenu Québec handles the provincial one. Neither administration stands in for the other.

The direct consequence: a pre-filled return approved in your CRA account settles your federal tax. It does not file your Quebec return, and none of the CRA pages describing this service mention Quebec or Revenu Québec.

And it is not a formality you can skip because you owe nothing. Several amounts paid out by Quebec depend on your having filed the provincial return — the solidarity tax credit is the best-known example. Not filing it means giving up money you are entitled to.

SimpleFile: the service that already exists

The 2027 pre-filled return is not landing on empty ground. The CRA already offers SimpleFile, a free service aimed at the same profiles: lower income, simple tax situation. It comes in a digital version, by phone and on paper.

The schedule is the same from one year to the next: in September 2026, the CRA will send eligible individuals an invitation to file their 2025 return this way.

To tell whether you are in the target group, the CRA publishes income limits by province. Here are Quebec's, for the 2025 tax year:

The disability tax credit, often shortened to DTC, is a federal credit granted on medical certification. It raises the limit because someone entitled to it has, by definition, a reduced earning capacity at equal income.

Here too, the same limit applies: SimpleFile files the federal return.

What to do between now and March 2027

Three steps, in this order.

Check your CRA account. That is where the invitation arrives, and nowhere else. No account, no invitation.

Switch your correspondence to electronic. It is an explicit eligibility condition, not a matter of convenience.

Plan for the Quebec return separately. Whether or not the CRA pre-fills your federal return, the Quebec one is entirely on you.

On the calendar side, the March 2027 invitation arrives a few weeks before the usual deadline. The CRA sets the filing deadline at April 30: for the 2025 tax year, it was April 30, 2026, and June 15, 2026 for self-employed people and their spouse — with any balance of tax still due on April 30.

One last thing: pre-filled does not mean correct. The CRA fills the return with what it has received. If a slip is missing, or if you moved, changed jobs or had a child during the year, it is on you to catch it before approving. You are signing the result, whatever it says.