If keeping your job means paying a union or a professional body every year, that money usually comes off your income. Line 21200 is where those Annual union, professional, or like dues go.
What you can claim
Claim the total of the following amounts that you paid — or that were paid for you and reported as income — in the year, related to your employment:
- annual dues for membership in a trade union or an association of public servants
- professional board dues required under provincial or territorial law
- professional or malpractice liability insurance premiums, or professional membership dues required to keep a professional status recognized by law
- parity or advisory committee (or similar body) dues required under provincial or territorial law
The amounts include any GST/HST that you paid, whether they show up in box 44 of your T4 slips or on your receipts.
What does not count as dues
Annual membership dues do not include initiation fees, licences, special assessments, or charges for anything other than the organization's ordinary operating costs. Those parts of the bill cannot be claimed on this line at all.
You cannot claim charges for pension plans as membership dues even if your receipts show them as dues. A pension contribution is a pension contribution regardless of the label on the paper.
So a single invoice from your association may be part claimable and part not. The line items are worth reading rather than the total at the bottom.
The mix-up to watch for
Your employer may have shown the dues withheld from your pay for the year on your T4 slip, and the association or organization may also have issued you a receipt for the same dues that they received for the same year.
Do not claim the same amount twice.
Claim on line 21200 of your return the amount from box 44 of all of your T4 slips or the amount shown on all your receipts. If you have a question about the amount of union dues, or any other amount reported on your T4 slip, contact your employer.
The GST/HST inside your dues
Because the dues amount includes any GST/HST you paid, you may be eligible for a rebate of that tax. That is a separate claim — see line 45700, the employee and partner GST/HST rebate.
What your receipt must show
The CRA does not enumerate the fields a dues receipt has to carry. What the claim rests on is:
- the amount of annual dues paid
- the issuing organization, which is what shows the dues were required by a union, a professional board, or a body of the kind listed above
What to keep
Keep the receipts your union or professional body issued for the year, and keep your T4 slips alongside them. Having both in one place is how you see at a glance whether box 44 already covers what the receipt shows.
Dossier tags a dues receipt when it arrives and files it with the year's employment documents, so a receipt and a slip covering the same dues are visible together rather than found separately and added twice.
Official CRA sources
Source: Canada Revenue Agency (canada.ca). Not tax advice.