CRA Has Moved Most Tax Correspondence to CRA My Account Online Portals

CRA My Accounts are CRA’s primary method of communication with Canadian’s related to personal and business tax correspondence. If you have a CRA My Account for your personal and CRA My Business Account for your business, next steps are to ensure you have Email Notifications enabled in all your profiles.   

If you already have a My CRA Account: 

• Log in and confirm your email address is up to date 
• Ensure email notifications are turned on for all accounts, including: 
  • Personal My Account 
  • Each business account 
  • GST, Payroll, and Tax within each business account 

Email notifications alert you that new mail is available in your portal, but you must still log in to view the actual correspondence. CRA Notifications will never include a link to your portal or an attachment to protect your privacy. If you receive correspondence from someone representing themselves as CRA asking you to click on a link or open an attachment, it is a scam, don’t click or open.  

For Personal Tax Clients – CRA My Account

If you have a CRA My Account, you may now receive many items online only, including:

• Notices of Assessment and Reassessments
• Benefit notices (such as Canada Child Benefit or GST/HST credits)
• T1 adjustment and review letters
• Requests for information or supporting documents
• Instalment reminders and other general CRA correspondence

Some items (for example, certain cheques if you are not signed up for direct deposit) may still be sent by paper mail.

For Business Owners – CRA My Business Account

For most businesses, CRA correspondence is now delivered by default through My Business Account. This includes:

• Corporate Notices of Assessment and Reassessments
• GST/HST, payroll, and corporate income tax correspondence
• Audit, review, and collections letters
• Statements and requests for information

Paper mail is no longer automatic for businesses and must be specifically requested through CRA.

If you do not have a CRA My Account

You should register as soon as possible. We have developed steps to follow at: Creating a CRA My Account 

Without a CRA My Account, you are likely missing important CRA notices, deadlines, or requests for information, unless you have signed up for paper notifications.

If you have submitted a RC681 – Request for Paper Correspondence form to CRA, please let us know.

If you have not created a CRA My Account and do not plan to do so, please contact your Stark & Marsh advisor to discuss your options.

Business Clients

If Stark & Marsh previously received your Notices of Assessment (NOAs) by mail, please note that CRA is no longer sending paper copies to us. If an email address was previously added through CRA’s Represent a Client service, you may already be receiving email notifications when new items are available in your CRA My Business portal; however, if you don’t have an email address on file no one is receiving this information.

Represent a Client

Stark & Marsh has Represent a Client access to CRA Correspondence however we do not receive notifications of new correspondence being added to My CRA Personal or Business portals. Even with authorized representative access, CRA notifications are sent to the taxpayer or business owner, not to our firm. We do not receive automatic alerts on your behalf.

CRA Notifications – Phishing Emails

CRA email notifications will never include any correspondence. They only notify you that something new has been posted to your portal and you must log in to access the communication.

Sample screenshot of an email from CRA My Account; names and notification type have been blurred out: