Lenders and mortgage brokers often ask for documents that come from the CRA, like your notices of assessment or a proof of income statement. You can usually get them yourself through your CRA account or by phone, as long as the years in question have been filed and assessed.
What a notice of assessment is
After you file, the CRA works through your return and sends you a notice of assessment (NOA). It's a summary of the amounts the CRA calculated for your return. If the CRA later changes an assessed return, you get a notice of reassessment (NOR) showing the updated figures. The results are the same whether the notice reaches you online or by letter mail.
If you have a CRA account, the notice is available there once your return is processed, and the CRA says that in most situations this happens immediately. If you've given the CRA an email address and haven't asked for paper, you'll get your notices as online mail in your account rather than by post.
The proof of income statement
The CRA also offers a proof of income statement, sometimes called an "option C print". It's a simple, generic version of your assessment that summarizes your income and deductions for one tax year. The CRA's own examples of when you might need one include applying for a loan or qualifying for a benefit or subsidy. You can get it two ways:
- Online. Sign in to My Account, go to the Tax returns page and choose Proof of income statement. You can view and print it yourself. The online copy doesn't carry the section 241 stamp, but the CRA says the information is released at the request of an authorized individual under section 241 of the Income Tax Act.
- By phone, sent by mail. Call the CRA's automated line at 1-800-959-8281 (always open) to have a statement mailed to you. It can take up to 10 days to arrive, so leave yourself time. To verify who you are, have your social insurance number, full name and date of birth, complete address, and the line 15000 amount from your most recent assessment ready.
Copies of past notices
You can view or print notices for the current and previous years in your CRA account. Sign in, choose your individual account, then Tax returns or Mail, and pick the NOA or NOR you need.
If you'd rather have a paper copy of a notice mailed to you, you have to call the CRA at 1-800-959-8281. They may ask for your social insurance number, full name, date of birth, complete address, and something from an assessed return or notice, or have you signed in to My Account, to confirm it's you.
You can't simply pull up a spouse's or parent's notices. To see someone else's NOA or NOR, you have to be their authorized representative and they have to have a CRA account. The same goes for calling on someone else's behalf.
When a year was never filed
Both documents are tied to an assessed return. The NOA is what the CRA sends after it receives your return, and the proof of income statement is a generic version of your assessment for a specific tax year. So for a year you never filed, don't expect either one to be waiting in your account.
Filing late doesn't fix that overnight either. The CRA says an NOA can take longer to issue when a return is filed after the due date, when you file several returns at once, or when it reviews a return or asks for more documents. If you have missing years, sort them out well before you need the paperwork. Our post on catching up on unfiled back taxes walks through it, and if an assessed year has a mistake, see fixing a return you already filed.
How we help
Everything we file for you sits in your own online folder, sorted by year and encrypted, so when your bank or mortgage broker asks for your assessments and filed returns you can send one link instead of digging. If some years were never filed, we work out which ones are missing, file them in order, and deal with the CRA along the way. See how we work for more on the client folder.