It's January 12th and you're already behind.
Not because you're lazy or disorganized. Because T4 season doesn't care about your good intentions or those December planning sessions that never happened. Your inbox is filling up, your payroll system is flagging issues you forgot existed, and February 28th is 47 days away.
Here's what nobody tells you: most organizations that file perfectly on time don't have better systems than you. They just know exactly which corners can't be cut and which steps actually matter. I'm going to show you both.
The penalties aren't the worst part. Sure, CRA fines hurt. A few hundred to a few thousand $$$ depending on what broke and how often. That's real money leaving your budget for no reason.
But here's what actually damages you: the phone call from an employee in March who can't file their taxes because your T4 has an error. That's the conversation that erodes trust in ways quarterly performance reviews never will. And then the cascade starts. Amended returns, employee communications, your team spending weeks fixing something that didn't need to happen.
Most year-end disasters trace back to three things: bad data, bad timing, and bad assumptions about what your system can handle. Fix those three and you fix everything else.
The T4 is your contract with the CRA. Every dollar you paid, every deduction you took, documented and validated. Anyone on payroll who received remuneration in 2025 needs one. Salaries, wages, bonuses, commissions, taxable benefits. If money moved, they need a slip.
The deadline is February 28, 2026 for both filing with CRA and getting slips to employees. There's no such thing as "filed on time but distributed late." Electronic filing is mandatory if you have 50+ slips, but even if you're under 50, paper filing is a mistake. Electronic gives you instant confirmation and catches errors before submission.
Your T4 Summary isn't optional either. It's the proof that your individual slips add up correctly.
Quebec employees mean Quebec filings. Same concept, different rules, different system. The February 28, 2026 deadline runs parallel to T4s, not sequential. Box numbers have nothing to do with T4 box numbers, which trips people up constantly. QPP replaces CPP, PPIP adds another layer, and electronic filing is mandatory at 50+ employees or $2M+ revenue.
The mistake people make is treating RL-1s as "T4s but Quebec." They're not. Different calculations, different maximums, different submission process.
Box 40 is rejecting more submissions this year than any other single issue. The CRA now requires dental benefits reporting for the 2025 tax year. Employer-paid premiums, direct dental payments, health and welfare trust contributions that cover dental. All of it goes in Box 40.
If your system didn't capture these amounts correctly throughout 2025, you're finding out now. And "we forgot" isn't accepted by the CRA's validation system. Verify this immediately if you haven't already. Most rejections happen because the Box 40 dental calculation either doesn't exist or allocates to the wrong employees based on coverage dates.
You don't have time to procrastinate anymore. These five things need to happen this week because every item on this list can kill your submission at 11 PM on February 27th when you're finally ready to file.
Log into your CRA My Business Account and Revenu Québec portal today. Confirm your CRA Business Number, your Payroll Program Account (RP account), your Quebec Identification Number if you have Quebec employees, and your Quebec Source Deductions (RQ account). Don't trust what's saved from last year. Wrong registration numbers are the number one reason for rejected submissions.
Tax authorities need current employer info. Verify your legal business name exactly as registered, your complete physical address, your primary contact person with direct phone and email, and your authorized signing officer details. If you changed locations or structure in 2025, update with CRA and Revenu Québec immediately.
This is where most errors happen. For every employee getting a T4 or RL-1, you need their Social Insurance Number as 9 continuous digits with no spaces or dashes. Run batch validation if your system has it. You need their full legal name as it appears on official ID, with proper accents for French names. You need their complete address including unit numbers and postal codes, using their address as of December 31, 2025. And you need the right employment province because this determines CPP versus QPP and which provincial taxes apply.
If people are on vacation and you can't reach them, use the last known good address. Better an old address than an incomplete one.
Your payroll system needs to know which tax slip boxes get which numbers. Verify that Box 14 on T4 and Box A on RL-1 get employment income. Boxes 16 and 17 on T4 get CPP contributions. Box 18 on T4 gets EI premiums. Box 40 on T4 and Box O on RL-1 get taxable benefits, including that new dental reporting.
If you added new earning or deduction codes this year, make sure they map to the right boxes.
Pick someone who knows your payroll, will be available in February and March, and can access records quickly. Provide their full name, title, direct phone, and email. Don't use generic department lines or shared inboxes.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: most people skip the audit because they assume their system got it right. Your system didn't get it right. Not because it's broken, but because systems execute what you configured, and somewhere in the past 12 months something changed that your configuration didn't account for. New earning codes, benefits adjustments, mid-year policy changes, terminations processed incorrectly. The audit catches these before the CRA does.
Start by generating these reports: a complete T4 register showing every employee and every box, a complete RL-1 register for Quebec employees, your T4 Summary totals, your RL-1 Summary totals, and any exception reports your system can generate. Print these out or save them as PDFs because you'll reference them constantly.
Box 14 on the T4 shows employment income and should match what you actually paid during the calendar year. Cross-check with your general ledger wage expense accounts. If there's a big gap, investigate now.
Boxes 16 and 17 show CPP contributions. The 2025 maximum is $4,055.95 on maximum pensionable earnings of $71,300. Check that high earners who worked all of 2025 hit or are near this max.
Box 18 shows EI premiums. The 2025 maximum is $1,096.20 on maximum insurable earnings of $65,700. Same check as CPP.
Box 22 shows income tax deducted and should match your payroll remittance records for the year.
Box 40 shows taxable benefits. Review dental benefits, tool allowances, vehicle benefits, housing benefits. The math here gets complex, so if you're not sure how something should be valued, check the CRA's guide or talk to your accountant.
Negative values should never happen. They indicate bad adjustments or prior-period corrections. Unexpected zeros are a problem too. If an employee worked all year but shows zero CPP or EI, check their exemption status. Your T4 Summary Box 88 must equal the sum of all T4 Box 14 amounts exactly, not approximately. And Box 52 pension adjustments follow specific CRA formulas, so verify these carefully.
Fix issues now if you can. Wrong employee data, missing info, obvious calculation errors. Can't resolve before the deadline? Submit on time with your best information, then file amendments. Filing late with perfect info is worse than filing on time and amending later.
Some errors show up every filing season. Not because people don't care, but because the errors hide until validation.
Box 40 dental reporting is rejecting more submissions this year than anything else. Does your payroll system even calculate dental premiums automatically? Are benefits hitting the right employees based on actual coverage dates? Are you reporting employer portion only, or accidentally including employee contributions? If you're guessing on any of these, stop. Get your year-end premium allocation report from your benefits provider and use that to verify Box 40 amounts. Don't estimate.
Tax authorities are rejecting incomplete addresses at higher rates than ever. Missing apartment or unit numbers, invalid or incorrectly formatted postal codes, abbreviated street names that don't match Canada Post standards, missing province codes. All of these break submissions.
Audit your entire employee list this week. Anyone with questionable addresses gets followed up immediately. For people who already left your organization, use the last known address on file. An old address is better than an incomplete one. An incomplete address is an instant rejection.
SINs cause errors when you type them wrong or transpose digits, include spaces or dashes, or use temporary SINs starting with 9 for permanent employees. Always enter as 9 continuous digits with zero formatting. If you discover a SIN is invalid during validation, contact that employee immediately to verify the correct number.
If your T4 or RL-1 Summary shows negative amounts anywhere, everything stops. This isn't a warning you can work around. You cannot submit with negative summaries. The CRA's validation system will reject you instantly.
Negative summaries usually mean year-end adjustments weren't processed through the right workflow, prior-year corrections hit 2025 instead of 2024, or payroll reversal entries calculated incorrectly. Drop everything and work with your payroll system administrator or vendor to find the root cause. Create correcting entries. This might take hours or even a full day to resolve, but there's no shortcut. Fix it or don't submit.
Validation systems check your registration numbers against government databases. Common mistakes include using your Business Number instead of your RP account number, typos in registration numbers, using an old number after a corporate restructuring, or account status issues like merged companies or amalgamations.
Always copy registration numbers directly from your official CRA or Revenu Québec account dashboards. Don't trust your memory or old documents. Get them fresh every time.
Your audit's done and errors are fixed. Now you're choosing how to submit. This choice matters more than people realize. Pick wrong and you're adding hours to a process that should take minutes.
My Business Account is the web-based option, best for organizations with under 100 slips. User-friendly interface but time-consuming for larger employee populations.
Web Access Code is for bulk electronic filing. Most commercial payroll software use this method automatically (including Workzoom). Fast and handles large volumes efficiently.
Represent a Client means your external accountant or payroll bureau files on your behalf. Requires Form T1013 authorization on file with CRA.
Paper filing is only permitted under 50 slips. Don't do it even if you qualify. Electronic filing is faster, more reliable, and gives instant confirmation.
For Quebec, Clic Revenu handles electronic RL-1 filing and is mandatory for most organizations.
Run built-in validation in your payroll software and resolve every warning it gives you. Manually verify T4 Summary totals match detailed slip totals exactly. Spot-check your submission file for formatting issues. Save copies of everything with date, time, and confirmation numbers. Verify filing authorization.
Don't panic. The rejection notice explains what's wrong. Read the entire rejection message, fix issues in your source data, regenerate your submission file with corrections, re-validate before resubmitting, and document what you fixed. You can usually resubmit immediately after corrections.
Keep everything for six years. Original payroll records, all T4 and RL-1 copies, summary forms, submission confirmations, CRA and Revenu Québec correspondence, and supporting documentation. Store securely in physical and digital formats.
Skip the T4 if a contractor received under $500 with no tax deducted, they're a true independent contractor getting T4A instead, they're paid through a corporate entity not as an individual, or zero remuneration during the calendar year. But if you deducted any income tax, CPP, or EI, they need a T4 regardless of amount.
CPP exemptions apply to employees under 18 or over 70, receiving CPP disability, or certain agricultural workers. EI exemptions apply to those under minimum required hours, certain business owner family members, or self-employed unless they opted in. Make sure your system has correct exemption status. Exempt amounts show zero in relevant boxes.
Found errors after submitting? File amended returns immediately. For CRA, log into My Business Account, select "Amend a T4 return," re-enter all data not just corrections, mark as "Amended," and issue corrected slips. For Revenu Québec, access Clic Revenu, submit a correcting RL-1 slip, and issue revised slips.
Don't wait or hope nobody notices. Proactive corrections show good faith.
February 28, 2026. That's your deadline. That's 47 days from today. Here's exactly how to use them.
Week 1 (Jan 12-18): Validate registration numbers, audit employee data, verify business information. No excuses, no delays.
Week 2 (Jan 19-25): Generate draft reports, run initial validation, identify every problem area. Document everything.
Week 3 (Jan 26-Feb 1): Complete full audit, fix all flagged errors, finalize value mappings. This is your last chance to catch issues easily.
Week 4 (Feb 2-8): Generate final T4 and RL-1 files, run comprehensive pre-submission validation. Triple-check CPP and EI maximums.
Week 5 (Feb 9-15): Submit to CRA and Revenu Québec. Handle rejections immediately, same day. Don't let them sit.
Week 6 (Feb 16-22): Distribute slips to employees, handle questions, file any required amendments.
Buffer Week (Feb 23-28): If you're working during this week, something went wrong earlier.
This isn't a suggestion. This is the timeline that works when everything else is fighting for your attention.
Don't let 2026 turn into another scramble. Starting next month, reconcile payroll to general ledger monthly. Review employee data changes immediately when they happen. Monitor benefit allocations as they accrue. Watch CPP and EI accumulations for high earners throughout the year.
For the 2026 tax year, verify new hire profiles in Q1, review new earning and deduction codes, and confirm dental data. In Q2, check employees approaching maximums, review termination pays, and validate mid-year changes. In Q3, audit seasonal employees, verify contact info, and review system upgrades. In Q4, freeze system configuration, generate draft reports, and schedule your formal audit in early January.
Document who handles payroll processing, data validation, benefits coordination, system administration, filing and government inquiries, and employee communication. When roles are clear, nothing falls through the cracks.
If your current process involves manual spreadsheets, constant error corrections, and late-night panic sessions, that's a signal. Your technology should eliminate problems, not create them. Modern HRIS platforms automate validation, catch errors before submission, and integrate workflows that make year-end filing routine instead of catastrophic. If you're fighting your system instead of leveraging it, you're working too hard.
You have 47 days. Use them wisely.
About Workzoom: Workzoom is an all-in-one HRIS platform designed for Canadian organizations. Our integrated payroll solution automates T4 and RL-1 validation, reducing year-end stress and ensuring accurate, on-time filing. Learn more about our Canadian payroll capabilities.