How to Set Up a CRA My Account, and Why It’s Worth Doing

For Canadian taxpayers and businesses, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) plays an important role in everyday life – from processing your tax return to administering government tax credits and benefits.

When it comes to interacting with the CRA and its services, registering for the agency’s online portal — the CRA My Account — lets you view, track and access all of your tax and benefit information in one place.

What is the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)?

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is responsible for delivering tax-related social and economic benefits programs to Canadians, ensuring tax compliance and administering tax laws on behalf of the Government of Canada as well as many provincial and territorial governments.

For individuals, businesses and tax intermediaries like accountants, the CRA has a number of functions, including receiving and processing tax returns and benefit applications, providing tax verification and audit services, issuing tax documents such as notices of assessment, collecting taxes and determining benefits, like the Canada Child Benefit, for example.

Do I need a CRA account?

Technically, Canadian taxpayers can interact with the CRA without a My Account — by mail or phone — but a CRA account makes it much simpler to access your tax information online, including viewing the status of your filings and easily applying for certain benefits.

Using the digital platform can dramatically reduce the time it takes to receive your tax return (if you’re set to receive one) from about 8 weeks to 8 business days-- who doesn’t love more money in the bank!

Why you might need a CRA account

Registering for a CRA My Account gives taxpayers a central location to easily track and manage their tax and benefit related information. This includes:

How to create a CRA account

For individual taxpayers, creating a CRA My Account starts with registering for a user ID and password with the CRA. To register for a new account on the CRA’s website you’ll be prompted to enter personal information, starting with your Social Insurance Number (SIN), date of birth, and current postal code.

Next, you will be required to enter an amount from a line on the most recent or the previous year’s income tax or benefit return.

You can then create your CRA user ID and password, as well as security questions and answers. You also will be prompted to enroll in mandatory multi-factor authentication.

Once you have a CRA user ID and password, you can use it to sign into tax and benefit services on the CRA’s website 21 hours a day, seven days a week. The CRA has recently simplified their sign-in process, so you can access My Account, My Business Account or Represent a Client all from the same user ID.

Alternatively, you can use a sign-in partner to access your CRA My Account, which lets you sign in with your online banking information. You can also sign into your My Account via credentials you have already set up with a provincial partner, like an Alberta.ca account, for example.

The first two options – either registering for a CRA UserID or logging in via a sign-in partner — are only available to taxpayers who have filed their tax and/or benefit returns for the current or previous tax years.

Use your CRA My Account to find these important things...

Once you have a CRA My Account set up, you can log in to view a number of tax-related documents, statements — both current and historical, for example:

My Account also has a ‘View uncashed cheques’ tab on the right-hand menu of the overview page, where you can check whether you have any uncashed refund or benefits cheques from the CRA, due to a previous address change, for example.

How to update your CRA My Account

Under the Profile tab on the right-hand menu, you can choose to edit your direct deposit information, mailing address, marital status or authorized representative information. The CRA does not accept name changes through My Account.