🇨🇦 Canada · 5 min read · Published 2026-09-07 · Updated 2026-09-07

Written by Jordan Reeves · Editorial review: automated source and figure checks (how we check this)

Sources last verified: 2026-09-07

What Can I See in My CRA Account?

Your assessments, your carry-forward amounts, your benefit status and your correspondence. What it does not show reliably is anything reported by a third party less than a year ago, because contribution and room figures are built from filings that arrive after year end.

60-SECOND ANSWER

A CRA account holds assessments, carry-forwards and benefit status, but room figures lag third-party reporting by months.

The answer:: Assessments, RRSP and TFSA room, unused credits and losses, benefit status, and all correspondence in one place.
The trap:: Treating the TFSA room figure as current. It is built from issuer filings made once a year, so it lags actual activity.
The recommendation:: Set up direct deposit and online mail, because both remove the failure mode of a cheque or letter going to an old address.

Jump to the detail ↓

Where the AI summary above gets this wrong

"Check your CRA account to see your current contribution room."

That's surface-true. Here's what it misses:

Room figures lag by months — TFSA and RRSP figures are built from issuer and employer filings made after year end, so they exclude recent activity.
Carry-forwards are the reliable part — Unused capital losses, tuition amounts and charitable donations are assessed figures and are dependable.
It is where notices actually arrive — With online mail enabled, assessments and review letters go to the account rather than the post, which is faster and harder to miss.

→ See what your contribution room is worth

01 What is reliable

Assessed figures are dependable: notices of assessment, unused capital losses, charitable donation carry-forwards, tuition amounts and instalment reminders all come from processed returns rather than from projections.

Benefit status is also reliable, including Old Age Security and Canada Pension Plan payment details where those are linked, and the recovery tax deduction applied to Old Age Security payments — the collection mechanism is in how the recovery tax is collected.

Source: Canadian income tax rates for individuals

02 What lags

TFSA contribution room is calculated from issuer filings submitted once a year after year end. A figure viewed in the spring typically excludes everything done in the previous calendar year, which is why the Agency disclaims it for planning.

RRSP room is more current because it is set on the prior year's assessed return, but it does not reflect contributions made since. Your own record is the only current one — the tracking obligation is in tracking TFSA contribution room.

WORKED EXAMPLE · Try the numbers

Shows: what a given amount of additional taxable income costs you in tax at your marginal rate, and what you keep. Ignores: provincial surtaxes, credits that phase out with income, and any effect on income-tested benefits.

Amount ($)

Your marginal rate (%)

What you keep after tax

$6,700

At a 33% marginal rate, $10,000 costs $3,300 in tax and leaves $6,700.

Source: Canadian income tax rates for individuals

03 Three settings worth changing

Direct deposit removes the risk of a refund or benefit cheque going to an old address, which is the most common cause of a missed payment. Online mail means assessments and review letters arrive in the account rather than by post.

Authorising a representative, where you use an accountant, lets them see the same information and respond to a review without a further authorisation each time. All three take minutes and all three prevent avoidable problems.

Signing in at least once a year, whether or not anything is expected, is the habit that makes the rest work. Access is lost easily — a changed phone number, an expired sign-in partner, a forgotten security answer — and recovering it takes days by telephone, which is the wrong time to discover the problem is when a review letter is already running its clock.

Source: Contributing to an RRSP or PRPP

Online mail is the setting that matters most and the one people avoid, because a letter feels more official. A review letter with a thirty-day deadline sitting in a mailbox at a property you sold is how a routine query becomes a reassessment.