T4A – Statement of Pension, Retirement, Annuity, and Other Income

The T4A is the slip that carries everything an employer's T4 does not: a pension, an annuity, a scholarship, a fee for services you performed, a government benefit. It is the widest slip in the set, and two people can hold T4A slips with almost nothing in common.

You do not prepare it. You receive it and use the boxes when you file.

What it reports

The T4A, Statement of Pension, Retirement, Annuity, and Other Income, reports amounts paid to you that are not employment income. The box number is what tells the CRA — and you — which kind of amount it is, so the same slip layout can carry a superannuation payment and a bursary.

Who sends it

Pension plan administrators, and other payers of pension, retirement, annuity, self-employment, scholarship and government benefit income.

The boxes with their own line

Box 016 – Pension or superannuation. Enter this amount on line 11500. Eligible pension may qualify for the pension income amount; see line 31400.
Box 018 – Lump-sum payments. Enter this amount on line 13000.
Box 020 – Self-employed commissions. Enter your gross commissions income on line 13899 and your net commissions income on line 13900.
Box 022 – Income tax deducted. Enter on line 43700 the total income tax deducted from all your Canadian information slips issued in your name.
Box 024 – Annuities. See line 11500 to find out how to report this amount.
Box 028 – Other income. Amounts not reported anywhere else on the slip; see line 13000 and lines 13499 to 14300.
Box 032 – Registered pension plan contributions (past service). Enter the amount you can deduct on line 20700.
Box 034 – Pension adjustment. Not an income and not a deduction. Enter it on line 20600.
Box 046 – Charitable donations. Enter this amount on line 1 of your Schedule 9, Donations and Gifts.
Box 048 – Fees for services. Enter this amount on the applicable self-employment line of your return, lines 13499 to 14300.

Box 048 is the one that surprises people. Fees for services are self-employment income, not employment income, even though the slip arrived from an organization you did work for.

Boxes that are already inside another box

Several boxes break a larger amount into its parts. Reporting both the part and the whole would count the money twice.

Boxes 102, 108, 110, 158, 180 and 190 are already included in box 018.
Boxes 111 and 115 are already included in box 024.
Boxes 126 and 162 are already included in box 032.
Box 122 is already included in box 040.
Box 128, veterans' benefits eligible for pension splitting, is already included in box 016. Form T1032 covers the election.
Box 210, postdoctoral fellowship income, is already included in box 105.

Boxes you do not report at all

Box 014 (recipient number), box 036 (plan registration number) and box 015 (the payer-offered dental benefits code) are not reported on your return. Nor is box 037, an advanced life deferred annuity purchase — do not report it and do not claim a deduction for it. Box 116, medical travel assistance, and box 124, board and lodging at special work sites, are not reported either.

Amounts exempt under the Indian Act appear in boxes 144, 146, 148 and 195, and none of them are reported.

Some boxes worth naming

Box 040 – RESP accumulated income payments. Enter this amount on line 13000 and complete Form T1172.
Box 042 – RESP educational assistance payments. Enter this amount on line 13000.
Box 104 – Research grants. Report the grants received minus any allowable expenses incurred to carry on the research work, on line 10400.
Box 105 – Scholarships, fellowships, bursaries, and artists' project grants. Enter this amount at line 13010.
Box 106 – Death benefits from sources other than the Canada Pension Plan or the Quebec Pension Plan; see line 13000.
Box 131 – Registered disability savings plan. Enter this amount on line 12500.
Box 135 – Recipient-paid premiums for private health services plans. See line 33099.
Box 194 – PRPP payments. See line 11500 and line 13000 for pooled registered pension plans.
Box 196 – Tuition assistance for adult basic education. Enter at line 25600 the amount of tuition assistance that is more than the scholarship exemption you can claim for it.

Boxes 197 to 204 and box 211 carry COVID-19 benefit amounts and generally go on line 13000. Box 201, repayment of COVID-19 financial assistance, is the exception: which line it goes on depends on when the benefit was received and when it was repaid, and the slip's own guidance points to line 23210, line 13000 or line 23200 accordingly.

If a slip is late or looks wrong

If you have any questions about the amounts shown on your T4A slip, contact the issuer of the slip. The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) page this article is written from does not give a date by which the slip has to reach you.

What to keep

Keep the slip whole, with its box numbers visible. On a T4A more than on any other slip, the number beside the amount is the information: the same figure means a pension, a bursary or a fee for services depending on which box it sat in.

If you received more than one T4A, keep them all — box 022 asks for the total income tax deducted from every Canadian information slip issued in your name, so the set matters, not just one slip.

Dossier stores the slip and identifies it as a T4A, so it is with the rest of your year's paper. It does not read the amounts off it, and it does not decide which box an amount belongs to; the payer already did that when it issued the slip.

Official CRA sources

Source: Canada Revenue Agency (canada.ca). Not tax advice.