Student Tax Guide

File Even When You Owe Nothing

A return with no tax on it still does three jobs. None of them happen if you skip it.

It banks your tuition. Tuition credits do not expire. But they only exist once you put them on a return. Skip three years of filing because you earned nothing, and that is three years of tuition sitting on a slip nobody ever sent to the CRA.

It builds RRSP room. Every dollar you earn and report creates room to contribute later. That room never expires. So the summers you could not afford to save still count once you can. File through four years of part-time work and you start your career with room already waiting.

It starts your benefit payments. The Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit — the new name for the GST/HST credit — is money paid to you every three months. The CRA works out the amount from your return. No return, no payments. There is nothing separate to apply for.

The T2202, and What It Is Actually Worth

Your school issues a slip called a T2202. It lists the tuition you paid and the months you were enrolled. It is not the receipt from the bursar's office. Western and Fanshawe do not mail it to you — you download it from your student portal. It is the document most likely to be missing when a student return arrives with us.

What it gets you is a non-refundable credit. That word is doing a lot of work, so here is what it means. The credit lowers the tax you owe. It cannot take you below zero. If you owe no tax, your tuition pays you nothing this year — no matter how large it was. Almost every student is surprised by that, and it is the most common disappointment we hear about.

Nothing is lost, though. Whatever you cannot use this year stays available for a later year. That is what the next section is about.

One Ontario catch. Ontario got rid of its own tuition credit. Only the federal one is left. Advice written for another province — or anything written before 2017 — will tell you the credit is worth more than it is here.

Not every line on your school bill counts as tuition. The T2202 has already sorted that out for you, which is why you work from the slip rather than from what you paid.

Carry Forward or Transfer — the Order Matters

This is the one real decision on a student return. The rules run in a fixed order, and most families find that out backwards.

Step one: you use it first. Enough of this year's tuition comes off your own tax to bring it to zero. This is not a choice you make. It happens first, automatically, before anything else is possible.

Step two: you can give away what is left — up to $5,000 of tuition — to a parent, grandparent, spouse or common-law partner. You pick one person and sign it over in writing. You cannot split it between a parent and a grandparent. And that $5,000 is reduced by whatever step one already used.

Step three: the rest stays with you, for as long as you need it. No cap, no expiry date.

Now the part that costs families real money. Once tuition carries forward into a future year, it can never be transferred. Not later, not ever. The transfer is only on the table in the same year you paid the tuition. A parent planning to collect four years of your credits after you graduate cannot do it — that chance came and went each spring.

You do not get to time your own carried-forward amount either. It comes off the first year you owe tax. You cannot hold it back for a year when you earn more.

So the question each spring is narrower than it looks: is this credit worth more to a parent now, or to you in your first full-time job? Heading into a well-paid field, keeping it usually wins. Facing a few more low-income years, your parent probably gets more out of it. It is a family conversation, and it is worth having in March rather than after the fact.

Scholarships, Bursaries and RESP Money

Scholarship, bursary and fellowship money arrives on a slip called a T4A. Getting one worries students more than it should.

If you are enrolled full-time, that money is generally tax-free. Part-time is treated less generously and only part of it is exempt. Either way the slip goes on your return — the exemption gets applied there. You do not handle it by leaving the slip out.

RESP money comes out in two pieces. What your parents put in comes back to them, tax-free. The government grants and the investment growth come out as an Educational Assistance Payment, and that piece is taxable — to you, not to your parents.

That is the plan working exactly as designed. The money deliberately lands on the person in the family with the lowest income. But it is still income, it still arrives on a slip, and in a year with a good co-op term it can be the thing that finally makes you owe tax. Which is usually the same year your tuition credit does something.

Moving for School, and Moving Back

You can deduct moving costs when your new place is at least 40 km closer to your school or job than your old place was. That is measured along the normal driving route, not a straight line on a map. London to Toronto clears it easily. A move across London does not.

The catch is what you get to deduct it against.

Moving to school only counts against the taxable part of your scholarships and bursaries. Since most full-time award money is tax-free, that part is usually nil. The deduction exists on paper and does nothing in practice.

Moving for work is the one that pays. Take a co-op term or a summer job in another city and you deduct the move against the wages you earn there — and wages are fully taxable. Move to Calgary in April and home again in August, and that is two separate moves, each one deductible against what you earned after it.

Keep receipts as you go: travel, movers, a few nights of temporary accommodation, the cost of breaking a lease. There are flat-rate options for mileage and meals so you are not hoarding fuel receipts, and we will tell you which method comes out ahead. Rebuilding a move from a bank statement eight months later is where this deduction usually dies.