Tax Deadline 2027 Canada: Your Exact Date by Filer Type (T1, Self-Employed, RRSP)

Your 2027 Tax Deadlines at a Glance

'Tax deadline 2027' actually covers ten separate deadlines, depending on who you are and what you're filing. Seven of them are fixed by statute and don't depend on CRA publishing anything. Two are derived by applying a documented CRA rule to the 2027 calendar. One — when NETFILE opens — genuinely isn't known yet. Here's the full 2027 calendar in one table:

Confirmed, Derived, or Not Yet Announced: How These Dates Were Calculated

Not every date in that table carries the same level of certainty, and it's worth knowing which is which before you build a calendar around it.

Confirmed: Locked by Statute

The April 30 filing and payment deadline, the June 15 self-employed filing deadline, and the four instalment dates (the 15th of March, June, September, and December) are fixed dates written into the Income Tax Act. They don't depend on CRA publishing a calendar each year — they only move if they land on a Saturday, Sunday, or CRA-recognized public holiday, in which case a payment or return is treated as on time if received the next business day. In 2027, none of these dates lands on a weekend: April 30 is a Friday, June 15 is a Tuesday, and the remaining instalment dates — March 15, September 15, and December 15 — land on a Monday and two Wednesdays. No shift needed this cycle.

Derived: Calculated From a Documented CRA Rule

Two dates on the table aren't announced by CRA in advance — they're calculated by applying a published rule to the calendar, the same arithmetic CRA itself uses. The RRSP deduction deadline follows the 60-day rule: contributions made within the first 60 days of a calendar year can still be deducted against the prior tax year. Sixty days after December 31, 2026 lands on Monday, March 1, 2027. You can check the pattern against the 2026 precedent: CRA's own contribution-limit guidance states that contributions from March 4, 2025 to March 2, 2026 qualified for a 2025-return deduction — that window closed on a Monday because March 1, 2026 fell on a Sunday and shifted to the next business day.

The T4 slip deadline uses a different rule that happens to land on the identical date: employers must issue T4 slips by the last day of February, and if that day is a Saturday, Sunday, or public holiday, the deadline moves to the next business day. February 28, 2027 is a Sunday, so the deadline shifts to Monday, March 1, 2027 — the CRA precedent here is the 2025 T4 slips, which were due March 2, 2026, because February 28, 2026 fell on a Saturday. The RRSP deadline and the T4 deadline landing on the exact same day in 2027 is a coincidence of the calendar, not a rule that ties them together.

Not Yet Announced: NETFILE's Opening Date

This is the one date CRA sets operationally each year rather than by statute or formula, and it typically isn't confirmed until January of the filing year. The 2026 season opened NETFILE on Monday, February 23, 2026, at 6:00 a.m. ET, with the NETFILE and ReFILE services staying open until January 29, 2027. Anchored to that precedent, a late-February 2027 opening is a reasonable forecast — but it's a forecast, not a confirmed date, and this page will update once CRA publishes the real one.

April 30, 2027: What This Deadline Actually Covers

For the majority of individual filers, April 30, 2027 does two jobs at once: it's both the day your return is due and the day any balance owing is due. If you had employment income with tax withheld at source and no business income, this is almost certainly your only deadline to track. What it does not cover is GST/HST — if you also run a registered business, your GST/HST filing and payment deadlines follow an entirely separate calendar tied to your reporting period, not your personal tax year (see our GST/HST filing deadline guide for the exact rules). It also doesn't change which federal tax bracket your 2026 income falls into — if your income moved meaningfully in 2026, check the current federal tax bracket thresholds before you estimate what you'll owe on April 30.

Self-Employed in 2027? File June 15, But Don't Wait to Pay

This is the split that catches self-employed Ontarians every single year. If you or your spouse or common-law partner carried on a business in 2026, your filing deadline extends to Tuesday, June 15, 2027 — but your payment deadline stays at Friday, April 30, 2027, identical to everyone else's. Waiting until June 15 to file doesn't trigger a late-filing penalty, because June 15 genuinely is your statutory filing deadline. But if you owe money, CRA starts charging daily compound interest on it starting May 1, regardless of when you actually file.

Here's what that gap costs in practice. Say you owe $6,000 and don't pay until you file on June 15 — 46 days after the April 30 payment deadline. At CRA's prescribed rate on overdue income tax (7% for the July to September 2026 quarter, reset every three months), that 46-day gap adds roughly $50 to $55 in interest before you've filed anything. It's not a penalty, and it's avoidable: calculate your estimated balance owing and pay it by April 30 even if your return itself isn't ready, then take the extra six weeks to finish the paperwork without the interest clock running.

The RRSP Deadline Hides Inside Tax Season: Monday, March 1, 2027

This is the deadline most often confused with the tax filing deadline itself, and they're not the same thing. The RRSP deduction deadline for the 2026 tax year is Monday, March 1, 2027 — nearly two months before your April 30 filing deadline. Miss it, and a contribution you make afterward can still go into your RRSP, but it can only be deducted against your 2027 tax year at the earliest, not 2026.

There's also a penalty on the other side of this deadline that catches people rushing to maximize a last-minute contribution: if you contribute more than your RRSP deduction limit by more than $2,000, CRA charges 1% per month on the excess for as long as it stays in the account. Before making a large contribution near the deadline, confirm your actual deduction room on your CRA My Account or your latest notice of assessment — not an estimate. For the strategy side of this deadline — spousal RRSPs, bracket-dropping contributions, and how much a GTA filer in a high bracket actually saves per dollar contributed — see our RRSP deadline strategy guide.

Instalment Payments: Four More Dates on the 2027 Calendar

If you owe tax that isn't collected through payroll withholding, CRA may require you to prepay it in four instalments rather than one lump sum on April 30. You're on the hook for 2027 instalments if your net tax owing exceeded $3,000 — $1,800 in Quebec — in 2027 and in at least one of the two preceding years, 2026 or 2025. This threshold typically catches retirees drawing pension and investment income, self-employed individuals, and anyone with meaningful rental or investment income that isn't taxed at source.

The four 2027 due dates are March 15, June 15, September 15, and December 15 — CRA will send a reminder notice with a calculated amount, or you can estimate your own based on projected 2027 income. Missing or underpaying an instalment doesn't trigger the late-filing penalty; it triggers instalment interest on the shortfall instead, calculated at the same prescribed rate as an overdue balance. A separate instalment penalty only applies on top of that if the instalment interest itself works out to more than $1,000 for the year — a threshold that mostly affects people who skip instalments entirely rather than those who pay late or slightly short.

What Missing a 2027 Deadline Actually Costs

Two separate charges can stack if you miss the April 30 deadline with a balance owing: a late-filing penalty and interest. They're calculated independently and both apply at once.

The Late-Filing Penalty Formula

CRA charges 5% of your balance owing, plus 1% of that balance for every full month you're late, up to a maximum of 12 months — so the ceiling is 17% of what you owed. Worked out on a $6,000 balance filed four months late: $300 (the 5% base) plus $240 (1% times 4 months), for a $540 penalty on top of the $6,000 itself. At the full 12-month cap, that same $6,000 balance would carry a $1,020 penalty. If CRA already charged you a late-filing penalty for any of the three previous tax years — 2023, 2024, or 2025 — and formally demanded a return from you, the repeated late-filing penalty is steeper: 10% plus 2% per month, up to 20 months — as much as 50% of the balance owing.

Interest Compounds Separately, and Daily

Interest applies whether or not the late-filing penalty does, starting the day after your payment due date and compounding daily on any unpaid amount, including reassessments. CRA's prescribed rate on overdue individual income tax is 7% for the July to September 2026 quarter, reset every three months based on published rates — the rate that will actually apply through 2027 hasn't been set yet, so treat 7% as the most recent confirmed anchor rather than next year's number. There's no late-filing penalty at all if you owe nothing or are due a refund, but filing late can still delay your refund and your benefit and credit payments, which are recalculated from the return CRA has on file.

One more thing worth knowing if you also run a registered business: the personal late-filing formula above is not the same as the one CRA applies to a late GST/HST return, which uses 1% of the amount owing plus 25% of that 1% per month overdue — a different calculation entirely (full breakdown in our GST/HST filing dates guide). Paying one on time doesn't protect you from a penalty on the other. And because both federal benefits and provincial credits key off your filed return, a late 2026 filing can ripple into the next round of benefit reassessments even after the tax bill itself is settled.

Building Your 2027 Tax Calendar

Start with the dates that apply to you specifically, not the full list:

• Most individual filers: one date to remember — Friday, April 30, 2027, for both filing and payment.
• Self-employed (or spouse/CLP is): pay by April 30, file by June 15 — but don't treat June 15 as the real deadline if you owe money.
• Anyone claiming an RRSP deduction for 2026: contribute by Monday, March 1, 2027 — separate from, and earlier than, your filing deadline.
• Instalment payers: add March 15, June 15, September 15, and December 15 on top of your annual filing deadline.
• Anyone filing online: watch for CRA's official NETFILE opening announcement, expected — but not yet confirmed — for late February 2027.

Marginal tax mechanics are also worth understanding before you estimate an April 30 balance owing — a common misconception is that a higher bracket taxes your entire income at the higher rate, which inflates people's fear of a big tax bill. Our guide to how Canadian marginal tax actually works walks through why that's not how the brackets apply.