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. Independent contractors use these forms to file their income taxes at year-end, instead of a T4 slip.
To generate T4A slips with Wave, you must have a payroll subscription. Wave Payroll generates T4A slips to report contractor payments. If you have other payment types to report via a T4A, you will have to produce those forms outside of Wave.
What do I need to do?
If you have paid a T4A contractor more than $500 in a calendar year, or deducted tax from any payment, you must give them a T4A slip and file the slip with the CRA.
How do I get T4A slips from Wave?
If you use Wave Payroll, you can generate T4A slips for every vendor you’ve marked as a T4A Contractor. Forms only generate for contractors you have paid more than $500 in 2024.
To generate a T4A slip:
- Click on the Tax Forms under the Payroll section of the left hand navigation panel.
- If you see that your T4A slips are ready, click Generate under Actions.
- This will open up your payer summary and the T4A information for each of your contractors.
Wave allows you to take advantage of the CRA's e-filing option, which requires us to collect a few additional pieces of information.E-File Transmitter Info:
If you are an accountant using Wave to submit T4s on behalf of a client, select I am a service provider submitting returns for others.
If you are the business owner, select I am submitting my return
Note: The "E-File Transmitter Info" (full name and address details) should be those of the person filing the T4. The "Contact Information" (full name and phone number) will appear on your T4 Summary and should be for the person who can answer questions about the return, if CRA needs to get in touch. - If there is any information missing, you will see a red notification message saying Fix Missing. You will not be able to continue until you fill in the missing information.
- When you're certain all of the information is correct, click the Generate T4As button.
- This will bring you to a screen with a short to-do list to complete your T4A filings. Download the T4As as outlined and distribute them to your contractors. Download the XML file for internet file transfer and upload it to the CRA website as outlined here.
If you notice any errors with the T4As after generating, you can correct certain problems by clicking Discard current form and start over in Step 1.
Additional details:
In order 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, please see Adding CRA program accounts to your business number.
- The T4A summary is not required with internet file transfer as the CRA performs the reconciliation automatically.
- Contractor payments will be reported in Box 48 on the T4A - Fees for services.
- Please note that as per CRA guidelines, GST/HST is not included.
If you make partial payments to a contractor bill spanning over multiple tax years, please note that each payment will be reflected on the T4A for the year the payment is made, not the year of the bill. Also, the prorated portion of any applicable GST/HST will not be included.
What are the deadlines?
T4A slips are due to your contractors by the last day of February following that tax year in which you have paid them. The slips are also due to be filed with the CRA by the same day. For the 2024 tax year, the deadline to file T4As and provide a copy to your contractors is February 28, 2025.
Please keep in mind that if you are a Construction company paying subcontractors for construction services, you will have to 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, please refer to this resource from CRA's website: T5018 slip – Statement of contract payments.
Does Wave complete Box 15, Payer-offered dental benefits?
No, Wave does not allow payers to complete Box 15 - Payer-offered dental benefits on T4A slips. This is because the CRA indicates Box 15 is optional when no amount is reported in Box 16 - Pension or superannuation. As outlined above, Wave only supports reporting payments that belong in Box 48 - Fees for Services, which do not require Box 15 to be completed.