Payroll Remittance Due Dates in Canada: Your Remitter Type Decides Everything

Most owners look up payroll remittance due dates, find the 15th of the month, and file that away as the answer. It's the right answer for a lot of Canadian businesses and the wrong one for plenty of others, because the date isn't set by the calendar. It's set by a category CRA assigned to your payroll account two years ago, and it can change without you noticing. Get the category wrong and you're not a few days late. You're late on every single remittance for the rest of the year.

Here's how the system actually works, what it costs when it doesn't, and the one line in your mail you should stop ignoring.

Why are payroll remittance due dates different for every business?

Because CRA sorts every payroll account into a remitter type, and each type has its own schedule. The type is based on how much you withhold, so a business with five employees and a business with fifty are on genuinely different calendars.

The sorting number is your average monthly withholding amount, or AMWA. CRA's own formula is the total of all required payroll deduction remittances in a calendar year, divided by the number of months that required a remittance, up to twelve. That single figure decides which of the four schedules below you're on.

What are the four remitter types, and which one are you?

Match your AMWA to the table and you have your schedule. Note that the AMWA CRA uses is from two calendar years ago, not last year, which is the detail that catches most growing businesses.

Every threshold and date above comes straight from CRA's remitting due dates guidance.

How does CRA decide your remitter type?

CRA reviews every payroll account in the country each November and sets types for the year ahead. In CRA's words, your type is "based on your average monthly withholding amount (AMWA) from 2 calendar years ago," and if it changes, "they will let you know in writing."

That letter is the part that goes wrong. It arrives in the fall, it looks like every other CRA notice, and it quietly moves you from one payment on the 15th to two payments a month starting in January. Nobody updates the calendar, the first accelerated deadline passes, and the penalty clock starts on a deadline the business didn't know existed. The types of remitters page is worth a read before November, not after.

What happens when your payroll grows past a threshold?

Nothing, at first, and that's the trap. Because CRA works from your AMWA two years back, the year you hire four people is not the year your schedule changes, which makes the eventual change feel like it came out of nowhere.

The practical version: if you crossed $25,000 in average monthly withholdings this year, plan for an accelerated schedule the year after next, and treat the November letter as confirmation rather than news. New employers who stop qualifying as quarterly remitters move faster, becoming regular remitters in the next calendar quarter.

What does a late payroll remittance actually cost?

CRA charges a percentage of the amount you were supposed to remit, and it escalates by how many days you're behind. The tiers are published: "3% if the amount is 1 to 3 days late," "5% if it is 4 or 5 days late," "7% if it is 6 or 7 days late," and "10% if it is more than 7 days late, or if no amount is remitted."

There's a second tier most owners never see coming. A late remittance assessed a second or subsequent time in the same calendar year carries "20% if ... the failures were made knowingly or under circumstances of gross negligence." Interest runs on top of the penalty, compounded daily from the due date, and CRA applies interest to unpaid penalties as well. On an accelerated schedule, where you have four deadlines a month instead of one, a repeat is not a remote possibility. It's what happens when a calendar is out of date.

What if the due date lands on a weekend or a holiday?

You get the next business day. CRA's rule is that "when a due date falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or public holiday recognized by the CRA, your payment is considered on time if the CRA receives it on or it is processed at a Canadian financial institution on or before the next business day."

Useful, but thin protection. Accelerated threshold 2 dates are already defined by working days, so the buffer you think you have may already be spent.

When is a remittance considered paid on time?

On the date the money reaches CRA, not the date you hit send. That distinction is the difference between a 3 per cent penalty and none.

CRA counts internet or telephone banking payments on the date your financial institution credits CRA, in-person payments on the date stamped on the remittance voucher, mailed payments on the date CRA receives them, and post-dated cheques or pre-authorized debit on the negotiable date. If you pay the afternoon of the 15th through a bank that settles overnight, you may have paid late without ever seeing a warning.

Where does the T4 deadline fit?

It's a separate deadline with its own penalty, and it doesn't move with your remitting schedule. T4 slips and the summary are due "the last day of February after the preceding calendar year," per CRA's guidance on when to file information returns.

The same weekend rule applies: if the last day of February is a Saturday, Sunday or CRA-recognized public holiday, the return is on time if CRA receives it or it's postmarked on or before the next business day. Remitting on time all year and missing this one still counts as a miss.

The YNL Group Inc. approach

Payroll deadlines aren't hard. They're just relentless, and they change on CRA's schedule rather than yours. What breaks is almost never the arithmetic. It's the November letter nobody opened, the bank settlement that landed a day late, the growth that moved you into a bracket two years after the hiring that caused it.

We run this for Canadian businesses as part of the back office: the remitter type on file, the schedule that matches it, the payment timed to clear before the deadline rather than on it, and the T4 season that arrives without a scramble. Organized books. Accurate remittances. One less thing you carry.

If you're not certain which remitter type CRA has you on right now, that's worth twenty minutes. Schedule a free consultation and we'll walk through your account with you.