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Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2019
News Canadian Payroll Reporter
Do you know your federal remitting rules?
Quiz yourself with these true and false statements on the CRA's regulations
BY SHEILA BRAWN
PAYROLL is a challenging job
with many responsibilities. In
addition to paying employees,
filing year-end returns, and pre-
paring Records of Employment,
many payroll professionals are
also tasked with sending the
Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)
their employer's source deduc-
tion remittances.
Sending in the wrong amount
or submitting payments late can
result in penalties and inter-
est charges for employers. For
this reason, it is important that
payroll professionals follow the
CRA's remitting rules.
This applies whether an em-
ployer sends in its own remit-
tances or outsources the job to
a payroll service provider. After
all, the employer is ultimately
responsible for complying with
CRA rules.
While payroll professionals
only need to comply with the
rules for their employer's remit-
tance category, it is still a good
idea to know the general require-
ments for the other categories in
case the organization's classifica-
tion changes or the payroll pro-
fessional switches employers.
How well do you know federal
remitting rules? Test yourself
with the following statements:
The CRA sets remittance
due dates based on each em-
ployer's pay period. True or
False?
False. The CRA divides em-
ployers into four remittance
categories for determining how
often they send in their remit-
tances and when they are due:
quarterly remitters, regular
remitters (monthly), and two
groups of accelerated remitters
(up to twice a month and up to
four times a month).
In general, the categories are
based on the employer's average
monthly withholding amount
(AMWA) two calendar years
ago.
The AMWA is determined
by totalling all of the amounts
an employer was required to
remit for Canada Pension Plan
(CPP), employment insurance
(EI), and income tax, divided by
the number of months (up to 12)
for which the employer was re-
quired to remit.
When employers have to re-
mit will depend on their remit-
ter category and when they pay
remuneration to employees.
Monthly remitters must
send in their withholdings by
the 30th day of each month.
True or False?
False. Monthly remittances
are due by the 15th day of the fol-
lowing month.
Employers with Quebec em-
ployees must remit their with-
holdings to both the CRA and
Revenu Québec. True or False?
True. Quebec employers send
the CRA remittances for EI, and
federal income tax and remit to
Revenu Québec their withhold-
ings for the Quebec Pension
Plan, Quebec Parental Insurance
Plan, and provincial income tax.
If a remitting due date falls
on a weekend or a public holi-
day, the remittances are due by
the day before the weekend or
holiday. True or False?
False. If a due date is on a
Saturday, Sunday, or a public
holiday, the remittance is due by
the first working day afterwards.
The CRA's website provides
a list of public holidays that it
recognizes.
see DOES page 8