For a lot of first responders, the return is a T4, pension contributions and some overtime. It gets more involved with volunteer service, employment expenses, and pension decisions near the end of a career.
Volunteer firefighters and search and rescue
If you put in at least 200 hours of eligible volunteer firefighting or search and rescue service in the year, you may be able to claim the volunteer firefighters' amount (line 31220) or the search and rescue volunteers' amount (line 31240). You can claim one or the other, not both. You can add hours from the two kinds of service together to reach 200.
- Eligible hours include responding to and being on call for emergency calls, attending the department's or organization's meetings, and required training.
- Hours don't count if the same organization also employed you to do the same or similar work.
- For the 2025 tax year (filed in spring 2026), the federal amount is $6,000. BC has its own amount of $3,000, claimed on Form BC428.
- The CRA may ask for certification of your hours from the fire department or search and rescue organization, so keep a record as you go.
Choosing between the $1,000 exemption and the volunteer amount
If a government, municipality or other public authority paid you as a volunteer firefighter, volunteer ambulance technician, search and rescue volunteer or other emergency worker, up to $1,000 of that payment can be tax-exempt. The exempt part shows in box 87 of your T4, and you can claim the exemption for each eligible employer. If you qualify for both the exemption and the volunteer amount above, you have to pick one. Claim the volunteer amount and the whole payment becomes taxable. The whole payment is also taxable if the same authority employed you, other than as a volunteer, for the same or similar duties. Which choice comes out ahead depends on the rest of your return.
Employment expenses
As an employee, you can deduct certain expenses only if your employment contract required you to pay them and you weren't given an allowance for them (or the allowance was included in your income). For many of these claims your employer has to fill out Form T2200, Declaration of Conditions of Employment, which you keep with your records. If part of your job is done from home, our post on home office expenses explains that claim.
Pensions and retiring early
On the CRA's list of income you can split with a spouse or common-law partner, life annuity payments from a pension plan don't come with an age condition. RRIF payments generally only qualify once you're 65. You can allocate up to half of your eligible pension income, and the rules have more conditions than that, so read our post on pension income splitting before you count on it. Our page for retirees covers what changes after you stop working.
How we help
We prepare personal returns and explain what we did in plain English. Pension splitting is one of the extras we quote on top of a basic return, and employment expense forms are among the government forms we fill out. Our founder's career included emergency response, and the system of checks we use on every file was adapted from the fire service's Incident Command System and closed-loop communication.
Official sources