You can pay your taxes, in whole or in part, when you file your return, or you can wait until after you receive your Notice of Assessment.
Payment On Filing – via Online Banking*
If you want to pay when you file your return, you can do so through online banking. Set up the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) as a payee like any other — by clicking ‘Add a payee’ and searching for ‘CRA’. You will be provided with various account types.
Select the one called ‘payment on filing’. Your SIN is your account number. Once that’s set up, you may pay as much of your tax bill as you wish.
Payment After Filing – at your financial institution
If you want to pay at the bank after you receive your Notice of Assessment, you will find a tear-off slip called a Remittance Voucher enclosed with your Notice of Assessment and/or Statement of Account. You can complete this voucher take it to the bank to pay in person.
Payment After Filing – Sending a Cheque
If you want to send a cheque by mail after you receive your Notice of Assessment you won’t find much information from CRA sources on how to do it because they really want to phase out this form of payment. We’ll let you in on a secret though: you can still do it. Just be sure to write your SIN on the back of the cheque and enclose it with the Remittance Voucher (see above). Enclosing the Remittance Voucher is important, because it specifies to CRA which account the payment is going into. Without it, your payment may be processed incorrectly.
Payment After Filing – via Online Banking*
If you’d prefer to pay electronically after you receive your Notice of Assessment, you can do so through online banking. Set up the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) as a payee like any other — by clicking ‘Add a payee’ and searching for ‘CRA’. You will be provided with various account types.
Select the one called something like ‘[most recent tax year] and prior amounts owing’. Your SIN is your account number. Once that’s set up, you may pay as much of your tax bill as you wish.
You can make online payments to this account at any time to pay down a balance owing to the Canada Revenue agency.
Partial Payments
If you do not pay your entire tax bill immediately, you will receive periodic Statements of Account indicating your current balance including any penalties or interest, minus any payments made since you received your last Statement of Account. Be aware that if you pay some or all of your tax bill anytime after April 30, an interest charge of about 0.1% (one tenth of one percent) per week will be applied to the balance, compounded daily.
* Note that payments through online banking are only available for individual income tax; at the time of writing this option is not available for business accounts such as GST/HST or payroll remittance. CRA has their own form of online payment available through their site (en français), or you can use remittance vouchers specifically created for this purpose. Remittance Vouchers are personalized and printed with special ink, and therefore cannot be downloaded. Instead they must be ordered in advance from CRA.