Paying taxes may not always be easy, but the Canada Revenue Agency wants it to be simple to make payments for current or owed taxes. Whether you’re paying your payroll, quarterly, or small business income taxes, or paying taxes on behalf of a client, the CRA offers plenty of payment options.
- To pay your business taxes or to remit payment for your clients, the CRA offers the traditional options of mailing in a cheque, paying by telephone with a debit or credit card, or paying in person at a Canada Post outlet or Canadian financial institution. Nonresident taxpayers can pay via wire transfer. You can also use other payment options such as a pre-authorized debit that acts like an electronic post-dated cheque or a credit card.
- Taxpayers have options for making online payments. You can go to your financial institution’s website and log onto your account. Look for an option to add a payee, and then find a CRA-related drop-down menu or header once you enter the payment area of the site. Complete the transaction the same way you pay other bills online from the bank’s website.
- You can use a Visa debit or Interac Online card to make payments directly on the CRA website using the My Payment tool. Simply enter the business number and navigate the hyperlinks to the type of tax you want to pay, such as GST/HST, quarterly income tax, or payroll tax. Enter the card information by the type of tax you’re paying and submit. The tool allows you to pay several taxes with one payment, so you can handle all federal tax obligations with a single transaction.
The big advantage to this method is that the payment goes directly to the CRA without any intermediaries. The service is free, although some banks charge a transaction fee. And you don’t have a pile of cheques to write, keep track of, or reconcile from paying several types of taxes. Using the service doesn’t lower the tax obligation, but it makes paying taxes a lot easier and more convenient.
