Understand T4A slips for contractors
Filing requirements and deadlines
Understand T4A slips for contractors
A T4A slip is a Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) form that summarizes all compensation your business has paid to a non-employee worker or contractor in a tax year. Independent contractors use these forms to file their year-end income taxes instead of a T4 slip.
You must give a T4A slip to a contractor and file the slip with the CRA if you have paid them more than $500 in a tax year, or if you deducted tax from any payment.
To generate T4A slips with Wave, you must have an active payroll subscription.
Wave generates T4A slips for reporting contractor payments only. If you have to report other payment types via a T4A, you must generate those forms outside of Wave. Key considerations when using Wave for T4A slips include:
- If you deducted income tax from a contractor payment, follow CRA guidelines to generate and file T4A slips outside of Wave
- Wave generates T4A slips based on bills marked as paid within the tax year
- Wave does not enter a value in box 22
Filing requirements and deadlines
To file a T4A with the CRA, you must have an "RP" program account number. For more information on program account numbers and adding accounts, see Adding CRA program accounts to your business number. Key filing details include:
- The T4A summary is not required with internet file transfer because the CRA performs the reconciliation automatically
- Contractor payments will be reported in Box 48 on the T4A - Fees for services
- As per CRA guidelines, GST/HST is not included
If you make partial payments to a contractor bill across multiple tax years, the T4A reports each payment in the year it is made, not the year of the bill. Also, the prorated portion of any applicable GST/HST is not included.
You must file T4A slips with the CRA and provide them to your contractors by the last day of February after the tax year you paid them. For the 2025 tax year, the deadline is February 28, 2026.
What Wave doesn’t support
If you are a construction company paying subcontractors for construction services, you must file Form T5018 Statement of Contract Payments instead of a T4A slip. Wave does not generate slip T5018. For more information on this type of return, refer to T5018 slip – Statement of contract payments on the CRA's website.
Wave does not allow payers to complete Box 15 - Payer-offered dental benefits on T4A slips. The CRA makes Box 15 optional when Box 16 - Pension or superannuation reports no amount. Since Wave only supports reporting payments in Box 48 - Fees for Services, which do not require Box 15, we do not support it.