Notice of Objection FAQs

File a Notice of Objection once the CRA has issued a Notice of Reassessment (or certain determinations) that you disagree with. The objection is the formal, statutory route to dispute the CRA's decision, and it is generally the necessary gateway to a later appeal at the Tax Court of Canada — you usually cannot appeal to the Tax Court without first having objected.

Do not wait. The objection deadline is strict, and the quality of the objection matters: a bare-bones form preserves the deadline but a substantive submission setting out the facts and legal arguments is what gives the file its best footing. Filing an objection also moves the file to a more senior CRA Appeals officer who reviews it independently of the auditor.

If you are close to the deadline, act immediately — even a few days can matter.

For individuals, the deadline is the later of 90 days from the date on the Notice of Reassessment, or one year from the original return's filing-due date. For corporations, the deadline is 90 days from the date of the reassessment. For GST/HST, the objection must be filed within 90 days of the date of the assessment.

If the deadline is missed, an application for an extension of time may be available under section 166.1 of the Income Tax Act (with a parallel rule for GST/HST), but it must be brought within one year after the original deadline, and you must satisfy the statutory grounds. The CRA's position on late extensions is strict, so a strong supporting record is needed.

Because a missed objection deadline can end an otherwise winnable case, the safest course is to treat the deadline as firm and act well before it.

After the CRA confirms a reassessment (or 90 days have passed since you filed a Notice of Objection without the CRA acting on it), you have 90 days to file a Notice of Appeal with the Tax Court of Canada. As with the objection, this deadline is statutory and firm.

If the 90-day appeal deadline is missed, a late appeal may be brought under section 167 of the Tax Court of Canada Act, but the threshold is demanding and there is an outer time limit. Relying on a late application is far riskier than meeting the original deadline.

In almost all cases, you must have filed a Notice of Objection before you can appeal to the Tax Court. If a confirmation has arrived, the clock is running — treat the 90 days seriously.

A Notice of Objection is an administrative step within the CRA. It is a written submission telling the CRA you disagree with a reassessment, and it sends the file to a CRA Appeals officer — a more senior CRA employee than the auditor — to review independently. Many disputes are resolved, in whole or in part, at this stage.

A Tax Court appeal is the next step, taken to an independent court rather than to the CRA. It becomes available after the CRA confirms the reassessment, or after 90 days have passed without the CRA acting on the objection. You generally must have filed an objection first before you can appeal.

The two stages also differ in nature. The objection is largely a paper review by the CRA; the Tax Court hears the matter afresh on the evidence, with pleadings and procedure resembling other litigation. Building a strong objection early often improves the position if the matter later proceeds to court.

Yes. A GST/HST assessment under the Excise Tax Act is appealed to the same Tax Court of Canada that hears income-tax appeals. You first file a Notice of Objection within ninety days of the assessment. If the CRA confirms the assessment, or does not decide the objection within one hundred and eighty days, you can take the matter to the Tax Court. Note that the wait before you can go to Court is 180 days for GST/HST, compared with 90 days for income tax.

Once filed, your file is transferred from the auditor (or determination officer) to a CRA Appeals officer, who reviews it independently. We make written submissions, and often oral submissions, setting out the facts, the documentary support, and the legal arguments for your position.

Many objections are resolved through full or partial settlement at the Appeals stage. We assess any settlement offer realistically against the odds and costs of proceeding to the Tax Court of Canada and advise you clearly on the trade-offs.

If the CRA confirms the reassessment and the result is not acceptable, the next step is a Tax Court appeal, which must be filed within 90 days of the confirmation. If the result is acceptable, the file closes.

No. GST/HST is a trust amount — tax you collected from customers on the government's behalf — and the collections pause that applies to disputed income-tax assessments does not apply to it. The CRA can collect a disputed GST/HST assessment while your objection or appeal is still alive. This is one reason registrants with a clearly wrong GST/HST assessment sometimes go straight to the Tax Court once the 180-day waiting period has passed, to compress the timeline.

It depends on the type of taxpayer and tax. For most individual income tax assessments, the CRA generally pauses active collection of the disputed amount while a Notice of Objection or a Tax Court appeal is in progress. That pause is one practical benefit of objecting promptly.

The pause does not apply across the board. For large corporations, the CRA can collect a portion of the disputed amount even during a dispute, and for certain amounts — notably GST/HST and payroll source deductions held in trust — collection can continue despite an objection or appeal.

Because the rules differ by situation, it is worth confirming which collection protection applies to your specific assessment, and addressing any active collection action in parallel with the dispute.

A waiver lets the CRA reassess a tax year after the normal reassessment period — generally three years for personal and corporate income tax, four years for GST/HST — has otherwise closed. Signing one gives up the protection of a statute-barred year, which can be a significant right to surrender.

A waiver should never be signed without first consulting legal counsel. An auditor who cannot meet the normal reassessment deadline may be unable to reassess at all unless the taxpayer voluntarily extends the window. If you or your client is presented with any waiver in the course of an audit, objection, or other dealing with the CRA, get advice before signing.

Possibly. If the standard objection deadline has passed, you can apply for an extension of time under section 166.1 of the Income Tax Act (and the parallel GST/HST provision). The application must be made within one year after the original deadline expired.

To succeed, you generally must show that you intended to object within the deadline, that you were unable to act or instruct someone to act for you, and that it is just and equitable to grant the extension — supported by a credible record of the circumstances. The CRA applies these grounds strictly.

Because the one-year outer limit is itself a hard cutoff, do not delay. If that window has also closed, other avenues — such as taxpayer relief for interest and penalties — may still be worth assessing.

It depends on the type of debt. Objecting to an income tax assessment — personal or corporate — applies a "stall code" in the CRA's system: collections action that has started will stop, and action that has not yet begun will not start, while the amount is in dispute.

Trust amounts are different. Objecting to a GST/HST or source-deduction assessment does not stop collections, so a trust debt remains fully collectible even while it is being disputed. For that reason, a clearly incorrect GST/HST assessment can take a year or two to correct while the disputed amount is being collected — one reason taxpayers sometimes choose to skip the appeals officer and go straight to the Tax Court of Canada on trust-debt files.

Yes, after a waiting period. For income tax matters, once 90 days have passed since you filed your notice of objection, you can appeal directly to the Tax Court of Canada without waiting for an appeals officer to decide. For GST/HST matters, the waiting period is 180 days from the filing of the objection.

Skipping ahead can save considerable time, and it is especially useful for a GST/HST assessment that is incorrect but remains collectible while in dispute. The Tax Court also applies the rules of evidence, which the CRA can sidestep at the audit and objection stages — so a well-documented case that stalled inside the agency often fares better before a judge or with Department of Justice counsel.

A Requirement to Pay (RTP) directs a third party who owes you money to send those funds to the CRA instead of to you. Issued to a customer, a trade RTP can capture up to 100% of the receivable and also reveals your tax difficulties to your own clients. Issued to a bank branch, an RTP freezes that account and forwards the balance to the CRA. A wage garnishment is technically an RTP sent to an employer, usually capped between 30% and 50% so the taxpayer can still meet living costs.

RTPs can often be reduced or lifted through negotiation, typically in exchange for a regular voluntary monthly payment. Be cautious about giving a collections officer your accounts-receivable list, because an RTP sent to each customer can stop a business's cash flow almost overnight.

Yes. Under subsection 160(1) of the Income Tax Act (and subsection 325(1) of the Excise Tax Act), if a tax debtor transfers property to a non-arm's-length person — a spouse, child, sibling, or related corporation — for less than fair market value, the recipient can be assessed for the transferor's tax, up to the benefit received. Transfer a $20,000 car for $1 and the recipient received a $19,999 benefit and can be assessed for up to that amount.

There is a hidden danger: even if the transferor owed no tax on the date of the transfer, the CRA can later reassess them for an earlier year, and that liability is treated as having existed retroactively — so the recipient can still be pursued. Because there is no due-diligence escape from a debt that did not yet exist, it is important to get advice before any transfer of property between related parties.

Yes. A Tax Court general-procedure judgment can be appealed to the Federal Court of Appeal, generally within thirty days of the judgment (July and August are not counted in the computation). The deadline is strict; missing it requires an application to extend time, which is not assured. Because the window is short, the decision whether to appeal has to be made quickly, while the trial is still fresh.

No — it is not a retrial. The Federal Court of Appeal reviews the Tax Court's decision for error under a standard of review that depends on the type of question. Questions of law (how the Income Tax Act was interpreted, the legal test applied) are reviewed for correctness. Questions of fact are reviewed only for "palpable and overriding error," a demanding standard that gives deference to the trial judge who heard the witnesses. An appeal that is really a complaint about how the evidence was weighed usually fails; an appeal that identifies a genuine legal error has a real prospect.

For most income tax and GST/HST disputes, yes. The Notice of Objection filed with the CRA is the mandatory first step, and it preserves your right to appeal. You can appeal to the Tax Court only after the CRA confirms or reassesses in response to your objection, or after 90 days have passed since you filed the objection with no decision.

Skipping the objection stage is a common reason appeals get blocked, so if you have not objected yet, start there.

The CRA has a discretion under the taxpayer relief provisions (subsection 220(3.1) of the Income Tax Act) to cancel or waive interest and penalties where the circumstances justify it. The recognized grounds are extraordinary circumstances beyond the taxpayer's control, delay or error on the CRA's part, and inability to pay or financial hardship. The relief reaches interest and penalties only — it does not reduce the underlying tax, which must be disputed through an objection or appeal.

The decision is discretionary, so a well-documented request that ties the facts to a recognized ground is far more likely to succeed than a bare assertion.

The standard form is Form RC4288, "Request for Taxpayer Relief — Cancel or Waive Penalties and Interest." It asks the taxpayer to identify the years and amounts, select the grounds relied on, and explain the circumstances. The explanation is the heart of the request, and it should be supported with documentation — medical records, a death certificate, correspondence showing CRA delay, or financial statements for a hardship claim, depending on the ground.

If the request is denied or granted only in part, a second-level administrative review is available, and a relief decision can ultimately be challenged by judicial review in the Federal Court.

A tax debt does not attach to property on its own. The CRA first certifies the unpaid amount and registers a certificate in the Federal Court under section 223 of the Income Tax Act, which then has the force of a court judgment. With that judgment, the CRA can register a charge against the taxpayer's real property in the relevant provincial land registry. The charge — often called a tax lien — binds the property and must be addressed before the owner can sell or refinance with clear title.

Generally no. A collections officer's role is to collect a debt the CRA has already assessed, not to re-examine whether the tax is owed. If you believe the assessment is wrong, the remedy is a notice of objection (and, if needed, an appeal to the Tax Court of Canada), not a debate with the collections officer. Arguments about the merits of the assessment usually accomplish little on a collections call, because resolving the validity of the debt is not the officer's job.