The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has launched a new feature that will automatically complete portions of a taxpayer’s income tax return.

Last week, Minister of National Revenue Diane Lebouthillier announced that the CRA had created a service to automatically fill in certain parts of an income tax and benefit return when it is filed online with certified tax preparation software.

The new auto-fill feature draws from information that the CRA already has on file and uses it to populate the corresponding fields in the tax software program. The CRA says it is able to pull data related to such things as T3, T4, and T5 slips, Registered Retirement Savings Plans, Home Buyers’ Plans and Lifelong Learning Plans, non-capital losses, capital gains and losses, capital gains deductions, as well as federal and provincial tuition, education, and textbook carryover amounts. 

These are just some of the sources for auto-fill information. A complete list is available on the CRA web site page www.cra.gc.ca/auto-fill.

“Auto-fill my return represents a major first step towards auto-population of returns, and is a prime example of how the Government of Canada is leveraging technology to support Canadians who want to file without using paper forms,” comments Lebouthillier.