When money reaches the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), you can confirm that the payment was sent and received. A Confirmation of Payment is the CRA's acknowledgement that a payment landed in an account — an instalment, a GST/HST remittance, or a balance owing.
What this document is
Evidence that money was paid. It is not a claim, and nothing is deducted because of it. It answers one question — did this payment arrive, and against which account — and that is a question worth being able to answer years later.
Who issues it
The CRA. Payments can be made online, by mail, or in person, and the CRA's payments page has a section for confirming what you owe, confirming that a payment was sent or received, and what to do if a payment was not applied correctly.
What it supports
Nothing on the return by itself. Its job is to close the loop on an amount you already owed:
- an instalment paid during the year
- a GST/HST remittance
- a balance owing
- a payment made under an arrangement to pay a debt over time
Where the payment is an instalment, the confirmation is what turns the instalment reminder into a record of what was actually paid.
What to keep
Keep the confirmation with the year the payment relates to, and with whatever prompted the payment — the instalment reminder, or the amount the CRA showed as owing. A payment record on its own says an amount left your account; a payment record beside what prompted it says what it settled.
This is pure keeping. There is no line to fill in and nothing to calculate. The value of the document is that it is still there if a payment is ever questioned, or if a payment was not applied to the right account and has to be traced.
Dossier files each confirmation against the year and the account it belongs to, so a payment can be traced back to what it paid.
Official CRA sources
Source: Canada Revenue Agency (canada.ca). Not tax advice.