T4 Deadline 2027: Your Slip Is Due March 1 — What to Do If It Never Arrives

When Your T4 Is Legally Due

A T4 has two obligations that land on the same date: your employer must file the information return with CRA, and your employer must get you your copy. Both are governed by the same rule — the last day of February following the calendar year the T4 covers — and both shift together when that date falls on a weekend or a CRA-recognized holiday.

If you are asking this question any time between now and next spring, the date that applies to you is the 2026 row: Monday, March 1, 2027. That figure is derived directly from CRA's own weekend-shift rule rather than published as a standalone 2027 announcement, but the rule itself leaves no discretion, so the date is not really in question. Tax software and NETFILE typically open before every employer has actually filed, which is exactly why late or missing T4s show up as a recurring problem every February and March.

The Rule Behind the Date

The last-day-of-February deadline comes from Income Tax Regulations section 205(1), which sets the filing due date for a T4 — along with T4A, T4A-NR, T4A-RCA, and T4PS — as the end of February following the year covered. CRA's guidance restates the shift rule plainly: when the due date lands on a Saturday, a Sunday, or a CRA-recognized public holiday, the return is considered on time if it is received, or postmarked, by the next business day.

For the 2026 tax year, that shift matters because February 28, 2027 is a Sunday. Monday, March 1, 2027 is an ordinary business day, not a holiday, so the deadline moves by exactly one day. That is a slightly different pattern than the 2025 T4 cycle, where February 28, 2026 fell on a Saturday, so the deadline had to clear the whole weekend before landing on Monday, March 2, 2026 — a two-day calendar jump instead of one.

What Happens If Your Employer Files Late

The deadline is not a suggestion. CRA can penalize an employer for filing T4 slips late, and the schedule it publishes for T4-type slips — its relieving administrative policy, designed to keep the penalty fair for small businesses — scales with how many slips were affected, not simply how late they are:

The practical floor is $100: a small business that late-files even one T4 by a single day still owes the full minimum, since CRA assesses whichever is greater, the flat amount or the per-day calculation. This penalty lands on the employer, not you. It does not extend your own T1 filing deadline, and it does not get you a copy of the slip any faster — which is exactly why the next section matters more than the penalty itself if you are the one waiting.

Your T4 Hasn't Arrived — What to Do, in Order

If March 1 has come and gone and you still do not have a T4, CRA has a specific three-step process for this, and it does not start with panicking about your April deadline.

1. Ask your employer or former employer directly

This resolves the large majority of missing-T4 cases. Payroll or HR can usually reissue a copy within a few days, whether you are a current employee or you left the job partway through the year. Leaving mid-year does not change the deadline: CRA's guidance for an employee who is laid off, resigns, retires, or is dismissed is that the employer should calculate year-to-date earnings and issue a slip around the time employment ends, but the legal filing deadline is still the same last day of February as for everyone else on the payroll that year. If the business itself closed, the rule shortens sharply — a T4 return is due 30 days after a business stops operating, not the following February.

2. Check CRA My Account

CRA cannot show you a copy of a T4 until after your employer has actually submitted it, so checking My Account in early February, before the deadline has even passed, will often come up empty even when nothing has gone wrong. Once your employer files, the slip typically appears under your tax slips shortly after. One common mix-up worth flagging: if the slip you are actually missing is a T4A(OAS), T4A(P), or T4E, those come from Service Canada, not from CRA or an employer, and you would sign in to Service Canada My Account to find them instead.

3. Estimate your income and file anyway

If the employer is unreachable and CRA does not have the slip yet, you are still expected to file by your regular deadline. Add up your pay stubs or final pay statement to estimate the income, and any deductions or credits you would otherwise claim from the slip. Attach a note to your return stating your employer's name and address, the type of income, and what you are doing to get the actual slip. If you file electronically, keep the pay stubs and your note on hand in case CRA asks to see them later; if you file on paper, attach copies of the pay stubs and the note directly to the return and keep your originals.

Filing Without a T4 Does Not Move Your Deadline

Every step above assumes the same thing: your filing deadline for the year does not wait for a missing slip. For most filers, the 2026 tax year return is due Friday, April 30, 2027 — a fixed statutory date that does not shift, since it lands on a weekday. If you are self-employed, you get until Tuesday, June 15, 2027 to file the return itself, but any balance owing is still due April 30, 2027 regardless of when you actually file.

Since your marginal bracket depends on total income for the year, not just the number on one slip, it is worth sanity-checking an estimate against the real thresholds once the actual numbers arrive. Our 2026 federal tax brackets guide has the exact dollar cutoffs, and how marginal tax actually works walks through why a slightly-off income estimate rarely changes your tax bill as much as people assume — only the income sitting inside the higher bracket gets taxed at the higher rate.

What If the T4 Shows Up After You Have Already Filed?

Once the real T4 arrives, compare it to what you estimated. A small gap is not worth chasing — if your estimate landed within a few dollars of the actual slip, most tax preparers would not bother amending. A meaningful gap is worth correcting: estimate $48,000 in income and the real T4 shows $52,400, and that $4,400 difference can shift your tax owing or refund by several hundred dollars.

To fix it, file an adjustment through CRA My Account's Change My Return service, or by mailing Form T1-ADJ if you are not set up for My Account. Worth knowing before you file it: CRA's current processing time for more complex reassessments is running around 43 weeks, so do not expect an overnight correction. A straightforward one-slip adjustment typically moves faster than that average, but it is not instant — one more reason the estimate-and-file approach beats waiting indefinitely for the slip in the first place.

The Rest of the 2027 Tax Season Calendar

The T4 deadline is one date on a calendar that has several more worth knowing if you are already thinking ahead to the 2026 tax year:

Notice that the T4 deadline and the RRSP contribution deadline for the 2026 tax year land on the exact same date, Monday, March 1, 2027, even though they come from two completely different rules. That is a coincidence of the calendar, not a connection between the two deadlines; our RRSP deadline guide covers the contribution-side strategy in full. If you also run a business registered for GST/HST, those returns follow yet another schedule entirely — see our GST/HST filing deadlines guide, including the same self-employed June 15 quirk that shows up here.

Your T4 numbers do more than determine your own refund. CRA uses the income on your filed return to calculate the following July's CCB, GST/HST credit, and other benefit amounts — see our July 2026 CRA benefit increases breakdown for how directly last year's income feeds this year's payments. And if you want every CCB, OAS, and CPP deposit date for the rest of the year in one place, our CRA payment dates guide covers it.