T4 vs T4A: Which Slip a Contractor Gets (2026)

The T4 and the T4A share a first name and a deadline, and that is where the resemblance ends. The T4 reports employment income and the payroll deductions that came off it. The T4A, "Statement of Pension, Retirement, Annuity, and Other Income," is the CRA's slip for money that went to someone who was not an employee: pensions, lump sums, scholarships, and, for a small business, fees paid to a contractor. Picking the right one comes down to a single question about the person you paid.

The question: employee or not?

If the worker was your employee, they get a T4, and every dollar you paid them ran through payroll with CPP, EI and income tax withheld. The CRA's test for that is in RC4110 and turns on control over the work, ownership of tools, the chance of profit and risk of loss, and whether the worker is integrated into your business, not on what the contract calls the relationship. A "contractor" who works your hours, on your equipment, for you alone, is an employee in the CRA's eyes, and reclassification means back CPP and EI for both sides plus penalties.

If the worker was genuinely self-employed, or was a business, they get a T4A, and nothing was withheld from what you paid them; they remit their own tax and CPP, and can opt into EI special benefits if they choose. The pay stub for the T4 side exists because employees are paid in periods with deductions; the T4A side has invoices, and no stub, which is why lenders treat the two differently.

What a T4A covers

The slip has more boxes than any small employer will use, because it also serves pension administrators, universities and insurers. The ones that matter for a business paying non-employees:

Box 048, fees for services. Any fee or commission for services rendered, paid to an individual, partnership or corporation, totalling more than $500 in the calendar year, excluding GST/HST and PST. Consulting, design, bookkeeping, IT, trades, cleaning: all box 048. This is the box a contractor is looking for.

Box 020, self-employed commissions. Commissions paid to a self-employed salesperson who is not your employee, again net of sales tax. A real estate or insurance agent's split is the usual case.

Box 028, other income. Amounts over $500, or any amount with tax withheld, that fit no other box: research grants, cash prizes and awards, and honorariums that are not payment for a service. Not the place for fees for services, which have their own box.

Box 022, income tax deducted. Usually zero for a contractor. It has a figure when you were required to withhold, for example 15% on fees paid to a non-resident for services performed in Canada under Regulation 105, or when the payee asked you to withhold.

Boxes 016, 018 and 024. Pension or superannuation, lump-sum payments, and annuities. A business with a registered pension plan or paying out a deferred profit sharing plan uses these; a five-person company paying contractors does not, and the T4A generator leaves them out. Box 016 also brings box 015, the payer-offered dental benefits code, which the CRA requires whenever box 016 has an amount; on a contractor slip both stay blank.

Boxes 012 and 013. The recipient's identification. An individual is shown by SIN in box 012; a business by its 15-character program account number (123456789RT0001 or RP0001) in box 013. Box 014 is an optional recipient number of your own. Box 061, your payroll account number, appears on the CRA copy and your copy only, not on the copies the recipient receives.

Other Information codes

Everything without a numbered box goes in the Other Information area as a three-digit code and an amount. A payer to contractors rarely needs any of them. The table covers the part of the CRA's list a business or small pension payer reports, which is also the set the T4A generator offers:

A few of these get confused with each other or with the T4:

• 028 is the catch-all described above. Contractor fees put here instead of box 048 land on the contractor's line 13000 as other income rather than business income.
• 105 is the full amount paid, with no threshold. The recipient works out the exempt portion; the payer does not net it down.
• 119 is group term life premiums an employer keeps paying for a former or retired employee, reportable above $50 rather than $500 when it is the only amount on the slip. 118 is the same for medical premiums. An active employee's group term life benefit goes on the T4 under code 40.
• 154 is a cash award or prize to someone who is not your employee, such as a supplier's sales contest won by a dealer's staff. An award to your own employee is employment income on the T4, and one that was really payment for a service is box 048.

The box 048 situation

Regulation 200(1) of the Income Tax Regulations requires a slip for fees for services. What the CRA has said since 2011, when it introduced a moratorium on penalties for a missing box 048, is that it "is currently not assessing penalties for failure relating to the completion of box 048" while it reviews the policy, except where a specific administrative policy applies. The first such policy arrived for the 2025 tax year: the moratorium was lifted for the trucking industry, so a trucking business paying more than $500 in a year to a Canadian-controlled private corporation for trucking services must report it in box 048 or face penalties.

The requirement is law; the moratorium is administrative and has already been withdrawn for one industry. A small business that issues T4As for every contractor paid more than $500 is complying with the regulation, giving the contractor a document that matches their invoices, and building the record the CRA will ask for if it ever questions whether the contractor was really an employee. The T4A slip generator fills in the recipient copies for one payee, box 048 plus the commission and tax-withheld boxes, for tax year 2025 or 2026, with a free preview before the $4.99 download (included with a subscription). For an employee, the T4 generator and its box-by-box guide are the right tools instead.

When both slips go to the same person

It happens: an employee who also invoices you for a genuinely separate business, a retired employee receiving a pension from your plan, an employee's estate paid a death benefit. Each stream gets its own slip. Employment income is never on a T4A and a contractor's fees are never on a T4, even when the payee is the same human.

Filing and the deadline

Recipient copies can be delivered on paper or electronically. The CRA copy of every T4A, with a T4A Summary, is filed electronically once you have more than five T4A slips in the year (T4s and T4As are counted separately), and the CRA's free Web Forms application handles small batches without payroll software. The T4A Summary totals box 048 and the other income boxes across all slips and reports any tax withheld, which for a contractor-only filer is usually nothing.

The T4A is due at the same time as the T4: the last day of February following the year in which you paid. For 2026 payments that works out to Monday, March 1, 2027 (the 28th is a Sunday). Late-filing penalties follow the same per-slip scale as the T4, from $100 to a $7,500 maximum. A Quebec payer who withheld Québec income tax from a self-employed worker's fees also issues an RL-1 (box O, code RD) on the same schedule; with nothing withheld, the T4A is the only slip. The whole sequence, US forms included, is in the year-end filing calendar.