As Canada’s tax deadline nears, what happens if you don’t file your return?

If you don't file your taxes and owe money you may have to pay penalties and interest, an accountant said. The tax deadline is April 30.

April 30 is the deadline to file and pay your taxes to the Canada Revenue Agency.

If you don’t, you can lose benefits, pay stiff fines or even face jailtime, an accountant told Global News.

“Failing to file taxes by the deadline – there are some serious consequences,” chartered personal accountant Shayan Rashid said.

If you owe money, the late filing penalty is “five per cent of your 2023 balance owing, plus an additional one per cent for each full month that you file after the due date, to a maximum of 12 months,” according to the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) site.

That means you could potentially end up paying 17 per cent of any balance you owe, Rashid said.

But if the CRA charged you a penalty for filing late in 2020, 2021 or 2022 and requested a formal demand for  return, the agency site says “your late-filing penalty for 2023 will be ten per cent of your balance owing” plus “for each full month that you file after the due date, to a maximum of 20 months.”

“That’s just the penalty portion,” Rashid explained.

“On the interest portion – this gets fun because now the rate of the CRA is charging is almost 10 per cent … and that compounds daily.”