After you file your 2025 tax return, you’ll soon receive a Notice of Assessment (NOA) from the

Canada Revenue Agency

. Starting this year, you can view your

digital NOA

immediately in CRA’s My Account after the CRA receives and processes your return. (You can no longer view it in your tax software as in prior years.)

Once you get your NOA, take a close look to verify that the

CRA

has assessed your tax return the way you expected. If not, you have the formal right to object and, ultimately, to your day in court. But in order to protect your right to object and perhaps take your matter to the

Tax Court of Canada

, or even beyond, you’ll need to make sure you file a valid and timely notice of objection by the deadline.

There are two ways to object. The simplest is to file your objection online by logging onto the

CRA’s My Account

for individuals, and selecting “File my formal dispute.” You’ll be assigned a case number that you’ll need to include when submitting documents, which can also be uploaded online.

If you prefer, you can file your objection by mail by printing, completing and sending

Form T400A

, Objection – Income Tax Act to the chief of appeals at your Appeals Intake Centre. If you’d rather not use the T400A, you can simply mail the CRA a signed letter that clearly outlines the facts and reasons for your objection.

In recent years, the CRA has added a “Progress Tracker” to My Account, where you can view the status of files that you have submitted to the CRA, including your objection. It will show the date your objection was received, and then the date that an initial screening was completed.

For individual taxpayers, the deadline for filing an objection is one year from the normal filing due date or 90 days after the date printed on the NOA, whichever is later. Practically speaking, that means if you file your 2025 return by the April 30, 2026, deadline, and you receive your NOA this spring, you have until April 30, 2027 to file an objection.

If you miss the deadline, you can still apply to the CRA for an extension within one year of the deadline. That application must include the reasons you didn’t object before the deadline and be addressed to the Chief of Appeals at an Appeals Intake Centre. You’ll need to demonstrate that you were unable to object within the time limit, you were unable to instruct someone else to act for you, you had a “bona fide intention to object,” it would be “just and equitable” to extend the deadline, and that your application was made as soon as circumstances permitted.

Should the CRA deny your application, or, if you don’t receive a response from the CRA within 90 days, you may further appeal to the Tax Court of Canada. And, if the Tax Court denies your application, you can appeal that decision to the Federal Court of Appeal, which is what one taxpayer did earlier this month.

The taxpayer is a Registered Indian pursuant to the Indian Act, and a member of the Mohawk Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy who resides in Mohawk Territory. The taxpayer said he paid income taxes in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, but stated that this tax was paid in error, and thus he should be entitled to a refund.

Unfortunately, he only objected to the 2014 tax year in October 2019, four years after his June 2015 NOA. The CRA rejected his 2014 objection since it was filed too late. In January 2020 the taxpayer filed an application in Tax Court for an extension of time to file notices of objection, not only for 2014 but also for the 2015, 2016 and 2017 taxation years.

He had two main arguments. First, he argued that Treaty Indians are neither citizens nor residents of Canada, and thus not required to pay income tax. Second, pursuant to the Constitution Act, the Income Tax Act itself is not applicable to him, which neither requires him to pay income tax, nor to be bound by the rules of the Act concerning the deadlines for filing a notice of objection.

The Tax Court judge, who heard the original case back in June 2023, disagreed, referring to a 2001 Supreme Court of Canada decision which concluded that “Indians are citizens and, in affairs of life not governed by treaties or the Indian Act, they are subject to all of the responsibilities of other Canadian citizens.” As a result, the taxpayer’s argument that he is not a citizen of Canada failed.

The next question the judge had to answer was whether the taxpayer, as a citizen of Canada, is subject to the procedural requirements under the Income Tax Act, namely to file a notice of objection on time.

The judge referred to a prior case which found that procedural provisions and deadlines apply, and must be obeyed, “even where the constitutional rights and treaty rights of Indigenous peoples are asserted.”

As for the Constitutional argument, the judge noted that in order to advance a Constitutional question in court, the taxpayer must have filed a “Notice of Constitutional Question” which clearly identifies the Constitutional question in issue. Because this was not done, the judge couldn’t rule on the Constitutional question, but added that, “Even if I were to allow the Constitutional argument to proceed, there is no evidence before the Court that supports the argument.”

In the end, the Tax Court refused to allow the objection as it was filed “1,596 days … too late.” He also missed the extension deadline.

The taxpayer appealed this decision to the Federal Court of Appeal, which heard the case on March 12. The taxpayer argued that the Tax Court made an error in applying the Income Tax Act procedural rules to him, based on the arguments he made at the Tax Court regarding his status as a registered Indian.

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In a short, four-page decision, the three-judge panel of the appellate court unanimously dismissed the taxpayer’s appeal for substantially the same reasons given by the Tax Court. It concluded that the taxpayer “was required but failed to comply with the procedural rules in the Income Tax Act relating to filing notices of objection and requests for extensions of time. Neither the Tax Court nor this Court can grant the (taxpayer) the relief he seeks.”

Jamie Golombek,
FCPA, FCA, CFP, CLU, TEP, is the managing director, Tax & Estate Planning with CIBC Private Wealth in Toronto.
Jamie.Golombek@cibc.com

.

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