T4s, ROEs and Year-End Payroll Filings: What Nobody Warns New Canadian Employers
New employers, especially ones running payroll for the first time after starting a business in Canada, tend to assume T4s and ROEs are back-office paperwork that can be handled loosely — year-end payroll filings dealt with “sometime early in the new year,” an ROE issued to a departing employee “whenever there’s time.” That assumption is the actual mistake. Both are formal obligations owed to a federal body, and both have consequences that land on you specifically rather than on the employee.
What a T4 actually is, and who it’s for
A T4 is the annual slip you issue to every employee showing their employment income and the deductions taken from it over the year — the document they need to file their own personal tax return. As the employer, you’re also required to summarize that information and file it with the Canada Revenue Agency, not just hand a copy to the employee and consider the job done. We don’t have research confirming the exact current filing deadline, and rather than guess at a date that changes or that we can’t verify, the honest instruction is to confirm the current-year deadline directly on canada.ca before you assume you have more time than you do.
What nobody explains about the Record of Employment
So what is a record of employment and who files it? A Record of Employment, or ROE, is a completely different document from a T4, and new employers routinely don’t realize they need to issue one until an employee actually leaves and asks for it. It’s the form that documents an employee’s insurable earnings and hours when there’s an interruption in earnings — someone resigns, is let go, or goes on leave — and it’s what Service Canada uses to process that person’s Employment Insurance claim if they apply for one. If you don’t issue it, or issue it late, you’re not just creating paperwork friction for a former employee — you can be actively delaying their access to EI benefits at the exact moment they need them most.
The part that surprises people: it’s not annual, it’s triggered
T4s run on a yearly cycle. ROEs don’t — they’re triggered by the event, meaning every time someone’s employment interrupts, a new ROE obligation exists, whether that’s your first employee ever or your fifteenth departure this year. Treating ROEs as something to batch and deal with later, the way T4s can be handled once a year, is exactly the misconception that catches new employers out.
Late filing has a cost, and it’s yours
Filing either document late doesn’t just create administrative mess — CRA and Service Canada both treat these as compliance obligations with real consequences for the employer who missed the deadline rather than the employee waiting on the document. We don’t have researched, current figures on exactly what those penalties look like, so rather than invent a number, the practical takeaway is: don’t treat either filing as flexible.
What to actually do about it
If you’re running payroll yourself, build both deadlines into whatever calendar or reminder system you already use for CPP and EI remittances — they’re not automatic, and nothing prompts you the way a bill does. If you’re using a payroll service or your accountant for payroll, confirm explicitly that T4 filing and ROE issuance are included in what they handle, rather than assuming it.
Cape2Canada’s free guides cover the wider picture of running a small business as a newcomer in Canada, if payroll compliance is one piece of a bigger first-year list.