If you’ve ever looked at a pile of contractor payments and thought, “Maybe we just… won’t bother with T4As this year,” you’re not alone.
But skipping required T4A slips isn’t just bending a rule—it can have real consequences with the CRA, both now and in the future. Understanding those consequences can help you decide that a proper process is much cheaper than the risk of ignoring the rules.
(As always, this is general information, not tax advice. For your specific situation, speak with a professional or CRA directly.)
What T4A slips do from CRA’s perspective
T4A slips are information returns. They help the CRA:
• Match what payers say they paid with what recipients say they earned.
• Detect unreported income.
• Verify that business deductions align with someone else’s income.
When slips are missing, CRA loses part of its visibility—and that’s when they may start asking questions.
Potential consequences of not filing required T4As
1. Penalties for late or missing information returns
The CRA can charge penalties when information returns like T4As are:
• Filed late
• Not filed at all
• Filed with significant errors that require correction
The penalty calculation can depend on factors like:
• How late the filing is
• The number of slips missing or incorrect
• The size of your organization
Even if each individual penalty doesn’t seem huge, they can add up—and they’re completely avoidable if you build a basic compliance process.
2. Increased audit or review risk
If CRA notices that your expenses suggest significant contractor payments, but there are no corresponding T4A slips where they’d expect them, that can:
• Trigger questions during a review or audit
• Lead to deeper scrutiny of your contractor classification (employee vs contractor)
• Result in requests for additional documentation on payments
In other words, missing slips can be a signal that your overall process might be weak, which invites more attention.
3. Problems for your contractors
Skipping T4A slips doesn’t just affect you. It can create issues for the people you pay:
• They may struggle to reconcile their records when filing their own returns.
• They might under- or over-report income if they’re relying on partial information.
• If CRA audits them and sees payments from you in their bank records with no slip, more questions can follow—for both sides.
Issuing correct slips on time helps everyone stay aligned.
4. Weak documentation if CRA challenges deductions
If CRA asks you to prove that certain contractor expenses are legitimate and should be deductible, having T4A slips and supporting records is a strong position.
Without them, you may be trying to justify deductions using only:
• Bank statements
• Vague invoice descriptions
• Incomplete or inconsistent contractor records
That can make it harder to defend your tax position, especially if other parts of your documentation are not well organized.
What if you realize you’ve missed T4As in the past?
If you discover that you should have filed T4As for a prior year and didn’t, don’t ignore it. Common steps include:
1. Talk to your accountant
• Explain what you’ve found: who you paid, how much, and for which years.
• Ask what your options are for correcting the situation.
2. Get your data in order
• Build a list of contractors and payments for the affected period.
• Gather invoices, contracts, and payment records.
3. File the missing or corrected slips
• Depending on CRA guidance and your professional advice, you may be able to file late or amended slips.
• There may be penalties, but proactive correction often looks better than waiting to be caught.
How to avoid this problem going forward
The best way to avoid “What happens if we don’t file?” is to make “We always file correctly” as simple as possible. That usually means:
• Collecting contractor data (names, addresses, IDs) at onboarding.
• Tracking all contractor payments clearly in your accounting system.
• Reviewing totals at year-end against current CRA T4A rules.
• Using a tool like T4ASlip to organize information and generate slips.
With a system in place, filing T4As becomes a routine task, not a stressful decision point.
How T4ASlip helps reduce non-filing risk
T4ASlip can’t make decisions for you, but it can remove many of the practical reasons people skip T4As:
• It centralizes contractor and payment data so slips are easier to prepare.
• It highlights missing information before filing time.
• It simplifies the mechanical work of generating and organizing slips.
When the process is less painful, there’s less temptation to avoid it.
Key message
Choosing not to file required T4A slips can lead to:
• CRA penalties
• Increased audit or review risk
• Headaches for your contractors
• Weak footing if your deductions are challenged
In contrast, building a basic, repeatable process—supported by tools like T4ASlip and good professional advice—turns T4A compliance into something manageable and predictable.
It’s almost always cheaper to get it right than to explain later why nothing was filed.