Not Tax Advice

This is the document we would most like you to read, because everything on this page is a limit on what Hypertax can do for you, and it is better to know about a limit before you rely on the product than afterwards.

Hypertax is software, not a tax adviser#

Hypertax is a computer program. It asks you questions, takes the figures you give it, applies the tax rules for the year to those figures, and produces a completed return.

It is not, and no part of it is:

• a chartered professional accountant or an accounting firm;
• a lawyer or a law firm;
• a person authorised to represent you before the Canada Revenue Agency, and nothing you do here makes us your representative on your CRA account.

Nothing Hypertax shows you is tax advice, legal advice, accounting advice or financial advice. It is the output of a calculation over the information you supplied. Using Hypertax does not create a professional relationship of any kind, does not create privilege over what you tell us, and does not put anyone on the hook for the position you take on your return except you.

If your situation involves a judgement rather than an arithmetic — whether something is taxable, whether you are a resident of Canada for tax purposes, whether you qualify for a credit, what to do about a prior year you did not file — you need a professional, and Hypertax is not one. We would rather tell you that than take your money.

You are the filer, and you are responsible#

The return Hypertax produces is a document you sign and submit under your own certification. That certification is yours.

• You are responsible for reviewing the return before you file it. Every figure, and every personal detail on it.
• You are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the information you gave us. Hypertax cannot know about income you did not tell it about, and it does not obtain anything from the CRA, your employer or your bank. In particular it does not use Auto-fill my return, and it does not see slips the CRA already holds for you.
• You are responsible for the tax, interest and penalties arising from what you file.
• You are responsible for the deadline. Hypertax does not file for you, so nothing we do stops a deadline running. See Submission is by print and mail.

Where Hypertax reads a figure off a document you uploaded, we show you what it read and ask you to confirm it against the document. Confirming it is not a formality. It is the point at which the figure becomes yours.

What Hypertax prepares in this version#

The T1 General federal income tax and benefit return for the current tax year, where your income is employment income reported on a T4, including the provincial or territorial tax computed on that return, for residents of every province and territory including Quebec. For a Quebec resident that is two returns: the federal T1 General, carrying the refundable Quebec abatement, and the Quebec TP-1, prepared from your RL-1 as well as your T4.

That is the whole of it. Everything in the next section is outside it.

What Hypertax does not prepare#

A return in any other country#

Hypertax prepares a Canadian return and nothing else. It does not prepare a return for any other country's tax authority, and filing your Canadian return does not discharge an obligation you may have elsewhere. If you have one, it is not one Hypertax has made for you.

The Quebec provincial return is a separate return#

Hypertax prepares it, but it is not part of your federal return and it is not filed with the federal return. A Quebec resident's federal return is itself different from the rest of Canada's: it carries the refundable Quebec abatement, and contributions go to the Quebec Pension Plan rather than the Canada Pension Plan. The provincial tax is assessed on the TP-1 by Revenu Québec.

So you receive two completed returns and you must post both, in separate envelopes: the T1 General to the Canada Revenue Agency, and the TP-1 to Revenu Québec. Posting one does not file the other. A Quebec return also requires the RL-1 your employer issued alongside your T4; without it Hypertax cannot prepare the TP-1 and will tell you so before you pay.

Returns more complicated than employment income#

Hypertax is built for the person whose tax year is one or more T4s and not much else. It does not prepare a return involving:

• self-employment, business, professional or gig income;
• rental income;
• investment complexity — capital gains and losses, foreign property reporting, or most investment income beyond simple reporting;
• farming or fishing income;
• estate or trust income, or a return for a deceased person;
• a non-resident or part-year-resident return, or foreign income and foreign tax credits.

Where we detect one of these, we say so before you pay rather than after.

Prior years and adjustments#

Hypertax prepares the 2024, 2025 and 2026 tax years, one return per year, each computed with that year's own rates and amounts. It does not prepare a year before 2024, and it does not prepare a request to change a return you have already filed — no T1-ADJ. If you need to fix a return you have already filed, Hypertax cannot do it: that is a T1-ADJ or a change in CRA My Account, both free and both done directly with the CRA.

A return for a year whose deadline has passed is still a return the CRA accepts, and filing late is better than not filing. What Hypertax does not do is work out what being late costs you: the CRA charges arrears interest from the balance-due date and a late-filing penalty where there is a balance owing, and it calculates both itself when it assesses the return. No figure Hypertax prints includes them.

Submission is by print and mail. Hypertax does not e-file#

Hypertax does not file your return electronically. There is no e-file button, and paying for your return does not submit it to anybody.

What you receive is a completed return as a PDF. To file it you print it, sign and date it, attach the copies of your slips the CRA's instructions require, and mail it to the tax centre the CRA specifies for your province. Your return is filed when the CRA receives it, not when you download it.

Two things follow from that, and both are worth planning around:

• Paper is slower. A mailed return takes materially longer to process than an electronically filed one, and so does any refund arising from it.
• The deadline is still the deadline. Allow for the post.

We are explicit about this because the alternative that sounds available is not. NETFILE accepts only a file produced by software the CRA has certified for that year; a PDF cannot be submitted through it, by us or by you.

Pending counsel review · CR-DISC-01

Where AI is involved, and where it is not#

Hypertax uses AI for a small number of clearly bounded jobs, and for none of the arithmetic. No AI model computes any amount on your return. Every calculated figure comes from a deterministic engine running versioned rule tables.

The AI features are also, as at the effective date above, switched off: they depend on consents that are still in draft awaiting legal review, so every one of them is running its manual path. Anything an AI feature produces, once they are turned on — an extracted figure, a rephrased question, a support answer — is subject to everything on this page. It is not advice, it can be wrong, and it is yours to check. The full account is in the AI-use disclosure.

Rule tables, and what happens if one is wrong#

The amounts, brackets and thresholds Hypertax applies are held as versioned data, and each return we produce records which version was used. We do that so that if a table is later found to be wrong, we can tell exactly which returns were affected instead of guessing.

We do not promise our tables are free of error. We promise that an error is traceable, and that if one affects a return you have already filed we will tell you rather than quietly correct it for the next person.

Third-party material#

Hypertax links to material published by the CRA and others. Those are their documents, not ours, and they change. Where our help content summarises a rule, the CRA's own words and the Income Tax Act govern, not our summary.

Contact#

If something on this page does not match what you were told elsewhere in the product, tell us and we will fix the mismatch: [ to be completed: support email address ].