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T3010
Every registered charity files a T3010 each year. From 1 January 2027 it has to be filed electronically, and paper stops being an option. If your organization has always mailed it, the work to prepare for that starts before then rather than after.
The CRA announced in June 2026 that all registered charities must file the T3010 electronically from 1 January 2027. Fax filing already stopped in April 2026, leaving mail as the only paper route, and that closes at the end of this year.
Online filing has been available since 2019, so charities that already file that way need do nothing. The organizations affected are the ones that have posted a paper return every year, which in practice means smaller, volunteer-run charities.
The part to start on now. Filing electronically requires access to the CRA's My Business Account, and registering is not a five minute job. It involves identity verification, and for a charity it means someone with the right authority setting it up and then authorizing anyone else who needs access, including your accountant.
Doing that in December, alongside a filing deadline, is how organizations miss deadlines. Doing it in September, when nothing is due, is a quiet afternoon. If your treasurer is a volunteer who changes every two years, sorting out access properly now also solves a problem you have not had yet.
Registering and authorizing access sets out the steps, including the one that stops most charities: whoever registers has to already be listed as an owner on the organization's business number.
It is the annual information return every registered charity must file, due within six months of the end of your fiscal period. A charity with a 31 December year end files by 30 June.
It is not a tax return. A registered charity generally pays no income tax. It is an accountability return, setting out where the money came from, where it went, who runs the organization and what it did.
And it is public. The information you file appears on the CRA's charity listing, where anyone can read it: donors deciding whether to give, funders assessing an application, journalists, and the organization down the road doing the same work as you.
Boards routinely treat the T3010 as a compliance chore and are surprised to learn a major donor read it before making a decision. It is worth completing as a document that will be read rather than a form to be discharged.
This is the part that separates the T3010 from almost every other filing.
There is a $500 penalty for filing late, which is the part people know about. The consequence that matters is different: failure to file can result in revocation of your charitable registration.
Revocation means the organization can no longer issue official donation receipts, loses the tax advantages of registration, and becomes subject to a tax on its remaining assets. Getting back is not an appeal, it is a fresh application, with a fee, and no guarantee.
For most filings, late means a penalty. Here, late enough means you stop being a charity. That is worth a board understanding clearly, because the return is often left to whoever has time.
| Section | What it asks for |
|---|---|
| Identification | Legal name, registration number, fiscal period, contact and address details, and whether anything has changed |
| Directors and trustees | Names, positions, terms, and whether each deals at arm's length with the others. Filed on the accompanying worksheet and not made public in full |
| Programs | A description of what the charity actually did during the year to further its purposes |
| Revenue | Broken down by source: receipted donations, non-receipted donations, government funding, other registered charities, fundraising, investment income and other |
| Expenditures | Split between charitable activities, management and administration, fundraising, and gifts to qualified donees |
| Receipts | Total value of official donation receipts issued for the year |
| Compensation | Number of employees, full time equivalents, and compensation bands for the highest paid positions |
| Assets and liabilities | The balance sheet position at year end |
| Financial statements | Attached. The return is not complete without them |
| Other activities | Activities outside Canada, political and public policy work, fundraising methods, and grants to organizations that are not qualified donees |
Directors, trustees and like officials are reported on Form T1235, and the information required is more personal than boards expect: full name, position, the dates their term began and ended, date of birth and home address. Providing it is mandatory, not optional, because the CRA uses it to identify the individuals responsible for the organization. The personal details sit on the right-hand side of the worksheet and are treated as confidential rather than published on the charity listing.
Two practical points follow from this. The listing has to cover everyone who served during the year, including people who joined or resigned partway through, which is the item most likely to be missing when the board turns over regularly. And if you want a director to be able to phone the CRA and be told anything, their name also has to appear as an owner on the charity's business number. Being a director is not by itself enough. See CRA authorization.
The question looks intrusive, and it has a specific purpose. Every registered charity is designated as one of three things: a charitable organization, a public foundation, or a private foundation. The composition of the board is one of the tests that decides which.
Broadly, where more than half the directors are related or otherwise not at arm's length with each other, or where the organization is controlled by a person or related group that contributed more than half of its capital, it falls on the private foundation side. That designation carries real restrictions that the other two do not: a private foundation cannot carry on a business at all, faces the excess corporate holdings regime, and is subject to tighter rules on non-qualified investments.
So a family-founded charity with three siblings on a board of five may already be a private foundation, and a change in the board can move an organization from one designation to another without anyone intending it. The answer on the worksheet is how the CRA sees that happening. Answering it accurately is also the moment to check that the designation on file still matches the organization.
The same arm's length concept appears elsewhere on the return, including the question about payments made to directors or to people not at arm's length with them.
If the charity had any expense for employee compensation during the year, Schedule 3 becomes mandatory. It asks for a set of numbers that most small charities do not keep in this shape, so it is worth pulling together deliberately rather than estimating in June.
| What it asks | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Permanent full-time positions | The usual number of permanent, full-time, directly compensated positions during the period, managerial positions included. It is a count of positions rather than of people who passed through them |
| The ten highest paid positions | How many of the ten highest directly compensated positions fall into each compensation band, whatever the work was. The bands are part of the public return |
| Part-time and part-year employees | A count of everyone directly compensated on a part-time or seasonal basis, and the total spent on them |
| Total compensation | The total for all compensation in the period, which also has to agree to the expenditure reported in the detailed financial schedule |
Two things trip this up. Directly compensated means pay, not reimbursement, so travel claims and expense repayments stay out of these figures even though they are money leaving the organization. And a charity with one full-time coordinator and a dozen summer students has to report both groups separately, which means the payroll records need to distinguish them before year end rather than after.
The compensation bands being public is the part boards are least prepared for. It is not a reason to report anything differently, but it is a reason for the board to know what the return will say before it is filed rather than after a donor reads it.
A charity must spend a minimum amount each year on its charitable activities and on gifts to qualified donees and grants to non-qualified donees. The amount is calculated from the value of property not used directly in the charity's programs or administration, which covers cash in the bank, investments, GICs, and land or buildings not used in the work.
The question arrives on the return as a threshold test: if the value of that property exceeds the amount set out in the question, which differs depending on the charity's designation, the disbursement quota schedule has to be completed.
The part worth knowing in advance is that the calculation runs on a 24 month average, not a year end snapshot. The return asks for the average value of that property over the 24 months before the beginning of the fiscal period, and again over the 24 months before the end. Two consequences follow. A charity cannot move the number by timing a purchase in December, because the average has already absorbed two years of history. And the figures have to be reconstructed from records going back further than the year being filed, which is straightforward if someone has been tracking it and tedious if nobody has.
The rate is 3.5% on the first $1 million of such property and 5% on the portion above $1 million, a change that took effect at the beginning of 2023 and that catches organizations whose reserves have crossed the line since. The CRA also has discretion to reduce a charity's quota for a particular year, and it is no longer accepting requests to accumulate property, though accumulations approved before then run to the end of their approved period.
Boards building a reserve for a building or holding an endowment are the ones most likely to fall short without noticing. A shortfall is addressable, and considerably easier to address before the return is filed than afterwards.
Official donation receipts have prescribed content requirements, and receipts that do not meet them are a compliance problem regardless of good intentions. The rules around split receipting, gifts in kind and services donated cause the most trouble. A charity cannot issue a receipt for donated services, which volunteers and small boards find counterintuitive every single time.
The rules changed in 2022. A charity may now make qualifying disbursements to organizations that are not themselves registered charities, subject to accountability requirements around what the funds are used for and how that is documented. This replaced the older and stricter approach, and it opened up partnerships that were previously difficult. It is reported on the return, and the documentation needs to exist before the money moves.
A charity must keep adequate books and records at an address in Canada, and make them available to the CRA on request. Inadequate records are a common finding in a CRA audit and can be a compliance issue on their own, independent of anything being wrong with the numbers.
Being a registered charity does not by itself require an audit. That requirement comes from your incorporating statute, your funders or your bylaws. See audits and review engagements for the thresholds under the Ontario and federal not-for-profit statutes.
For a straightforward charity, most of this comes from the year end file. Tick your way through.
Within six months of the end of your fiscal period. A 31 December year end means a 30 June deadline. There is no extension available, and the deadline does not move because a volunteer treasurer changed mid-year.
Until the end of 2026. From 1 January 2027 electronic filing is mandatory for all registered charities. Fax filing already ended in April 2026. If your organization has always mailed the return, the thing to do now is get CRA My Business Account access set up and tested.
There is a $500 penalty, and more seriously, failure to file can lead to revocation of your charitable registration. Revocation means you can no longer issue donation receipts and become subject to a tax on remaining assets. Regaining registration requires a fresh application rather than an appeal.
Yes. The return is incomplete without them, and an incomplete return is treated as not filed. They do not have to be audited unless your funders, your bylaws or your incorporating statute require it.
No. A charity cannot issue an official donation receipt for services provided free of charge, because a gift must be of property. There is a way to achieve a similar result where the charity genuinely pays for the service and the provider then donates the amount back, but it requires real transactions rather than an entry in the books.
Yes. That information is mandatory on the directors' worksheet, and it is how the CRA identifies the people responsible for the organization. It sits on the confidential side of the worksheet and is not published on the public charity listing. The listing also has to include everyone who served at any point during the year, not just those in office at year end.
Because board composition helps determine whether the charity is a charitable organization, a public foundation or a private foundation. Broadly, a board where more than half the directors are not at arm's length with one another points toward private foundation status, which brings restrictions the other designations do not have, including a prohibition on carrying on a business. It is worth checking that the designation on file still matches the organization.
The compensation schedule reports how many of your ten highest paid positions fall into each compensation band, and that part of the return is public. Individual names and salaries are not published, but the bands are. Boards are usually better served knowing what the return will show before it is filed.
Most of it is public and appears on the CRA's charity listing, where donors, funders and anyone else can read it. Certain information, including directors' personal details, is not published.
This page describes the requirements in general terms as at August 2026 and is not advice for your organization. Disbursement quota rates, receipting requirements and the rules on qualifying disbursements have technical conditions beyond what is set out here. The CRA's charity return guidance is the authority.
The filing change is straightforward if it is dealt with in a quiet month. Twenty minutes, no charge.
Call (905) 207-9639