What is the penalty for filing Form T400A late?
There is no late-filing penalty on the objection itself. Form T400A is not a return, so it does not attract the charge people are searching for. What it has is a deadline, and the cost of missing it is the loss of the right to have the assessment reconsidered rather than a sum of money. Filed inside the deadline, the assessment is under objection. Filed outside it, you need an application to extend the time for objecting, or you are left with a relief request, which can reach penalties and interest but never the tax.
How much is the CRA late filing penalty on a return?
For the 2025 tax year it is 5% of the balance owing at the filing deadline, plus 1% of that balance for each full month the return is late, to a maximum of 12 months. A higher rate applies where the agency had issued a demand to file and had charged a late-filing penalty in any of the three preceding tax years: 10%, plus 2% per full month, to a maximum of 20 months. That is the charge that often sits on the assessment being objected to, which is why the two questions get searched together.
Can I still file an objection after the deadline has passed?
Sometimes, through an application to extend the time for objecting. It is a different exercise from the objection. The application has to explain why the objection was not made in time, which means dates and evidence about the taxpayer's own circumstances rather than argument about the assessment. The merits still matter, because there is little point extending time for an objection that cannot succeed, but they are not what the application turns on. Where an extension is not available, the route that remains reaches penalties and interest only, so a dispute about tax effectively ends there.
Does interest keep running while I object to an assessment?
Yes. Interest compounds daily on an unpaid balance and nothing about an objection changes that. The penalty is the opposite: once charged on a return, the late-filing penalty is a fixed amount and does not compound. That asymmetry has a practical consequence for anyone objecting to a large assessment. Paying the balance, or part of it, while the dispute runs stops the compounding without conceding the point, and it removes the part of the exposure that grows purely with time rather than with the strength of either side's argument.
I want to dispute a penalty, not the tax. Am I too late?
Two different questions hide inside that one. If you are saying the penalty was charged in circumstances that should not have attracted it, because the conditions for the higher repeat rate were not actually met, for instance, then that is a dispute about the assessment and it belongs inside the objection deadline. If you are saying the penalty was correctly charged but the cause was beyond your control, that is a relief request, and it runs on its own look-back limit rather than on the objection deadline. Being late for the first does not make you late for the second.
Will the CRA collect the balance if my objection was late?
An assessment that is not under objection sits in the ordinary collection position, so a late objection leaves the balance exposed in a way a timely one may not. That is the practical cost of the deadline and it is usually larger than whatever the merits are worth arguing about. Where the objection period has gone, two things are worth doing at once rather than in sequence: put in the application to extend time, and deal with the balance itself, because interest compounds daily on whatever is unpaid while the position is sorted out.
Can I avoid capital gains tax on a foreign property?
Not by virtue of it being foreign — there is no exemption for that, and the "keep it offshore" advice you may have read is how people acquire penalties rather than savings. What genuinely reduces the gain is ordinary and legitimate: principal residence relief where the property qualifies and the designation is made correctly, a properly built cost base including acquisition costs and capital improvements, the timing of the disposition, the treaty rules for real property, and credit for the foreign tax paid. See principal residence and foreign property.
Can an accountant in one country file my return in another?
Yes, where they are authorised to represent you with that tax authority and the filing is done electronically. What matters is not where the adviser sits but whether they can lawfully act for you and are competent in both systems — a return prepared with no knowledge of the other country is where the relief gets missed. We file on both sides, from offices in India, the USA, Canada and the UAE. See how we work.
