The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is responsible for collecting individual overpayments for all COVID-19 benefit programs, such as the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), the Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) and the Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit (CWLB).

Starting in July 2024, for individuals who have not responded or co-operated, and who have been determined to have the financial capacity to pay, legal warnings will be issued and legal measures could be taken to recover monies owed. Legal measures are only taken when there is no cooperation from an individual with ability to repay the debt.

The CRA want to help you get the benefits and credits you are entitled to. To make sure you continue getting your benefit and credit payments, you, and your spouse or common-law partner, need to file your taxes. This is true even if your income is tax exempt under section 87 of the Indian Act or you had no income at all. Here are a few tips to help you.

Did you receive COVID-19 benefit payments from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) in 2022? If you did, you should receive a T4A Statement of Pension, Retirement, Annuity, and Other Income slip. These payments are taxable, and you need the information on your T4A slip when filing your income tax and benefit return.

If you receive correspondence from the CRA, you should open it and take the actions requested. If you have questions about the correspondence you receive, you should call the telephone number given in the letter. Additional information is available on the Benefits being reviewed? Here’s what you need to know page.

The quick and decisive actions taken by the Government of Canada to provide income support through the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) helped more than 8 million workers and their families stay afloat, and millions more through the Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) that followed.

As part of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government of Canada selected an attestation-based approach to provide this urgently-needed income support to Canadians in a timely fashion. Individuals determined if they were eligible for benefits based on established, publicly available criteria. The Government has been clear throughout the pandemic that while there will not be any penalties for those who applied for these benefits in good faith, individuals will have to repay the emergency benefits for which they were not entitled.

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is standing by to assist Canadians who may have received correspondence indicating that they will now have to repay some or all of the COVID-19 individual benefits that they received during the pandemic. As part of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government of Canada used an attestation-based process to provide urgently-needed income support to millions of Canadians. This relied on individuals determining if they were eligible for benefits based on established criteria. It was expected that some individuals would later be found to be ineligible and be required to repay some or all of the benefits provided. The CRA and Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) are working together to ensure that those who received COVID-19 benefits were, in fact, entitled to them.