Government Files is The Canada Report's public-records analysis series examining government documents obtained through Canada's Access to Information (ATI) and provincial Freedom of Information (FOI) laws. These transparency laws allow members of the public to request internal government records from federal and provincial institutions. This article reviews documents released through those processes and summarizes what the records contain and what they show. While we strive for accuracy, this article represents an analysis and interpretation of the source material. For complete accuracy and full context, readers should review the original documents, which are available in full below.
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The Canada Revenue Agency issued 138,149 first-time penalty assessments for over-contributing to a Tax-Free Savings Account in 2024 — the highest number in any year since the TFSA launched in 2009, and roughly 73 per cent more than the 79,767 issued in the program's first year. Together with reassessments, the agency assessed more than $175.8 million in excess-contribution tax that year alone.
The figures come from Canada Revenue Agency records released under access-to-information request A-2025-001941, which sought aggregate statistics on the TFSA excess amount tax under Part XI.01 of the Income Tax Act for every tax year from 2009 through early 2026. The release covers four data sets: the number of penalty assessments, the dollar value of those assessments, the number of taxpayer requests to cancel or waive the penalty, and the dollar value of penalties reduced or cancelled.
What the Documents Show
The TFSA over-contribution penalty is a one-per-cent-per-month tax on any amount a saver puts into their account above their annual limit. It is one of the most common ways ordinary Canadians run afoul of the tax system — usually by accident, often by withdrawing money and re-depositing it in the same calendar year without realising that doesn't restore contribution room until January.
The records show the penalty has become dramatically more common over 16 years. Initial assessments climbed from 79,767 in 2009 to 138,149 in 2024. The trajectory wasn't a straight line: assessments actually peaked early, hitting 117,217 in 2010 before falling to a low of 43,613 in 2016. From that trough the numbers have risen almost every year since, growing by more than half between 2020 and 2024 alone.
The dollar figures climbed far faster than the headcount. In 2009, the CRA assessed about $15.5 million in initial excess-contribution tax. By 2024 that figure had reached $175.8 million — more than eleven times higher. Because the dollars grew faster than the number of people penalised, the average initial penalty rose sharply too: from roughly $195 per assessment in 2009 to about $1,273 in 2024. Over the full 16-year span, the agency issued more than 1.3 million initial assessments and assessed over $1.2 billion in excess-contribution tax before reassessments.
Reassessments — corrections the CRA makes after an initial assessment — added another layer. Reassessment counts hovered between roughly 4,000 and 9,400 a year, but the dollar amounts attached to them swung widely, from about $1.2 million in 2009 to a high of more than $19.4 million in 2022. In several recent years the reassessment dollars represented a meaningful share of the total assessed.
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Why the Penalty Is Catching More Canadians
The records themselves don't explain the upward trend — they are statistics, not analysis. But the broader context is straightforward. The annual TFSA contribution limit has grown over time, from $5,000 when the account launched to $7,000 in 2024, and the cumulative room available to a Canadian who has been eligible since 2009 now exceeds $95,000. More room, more accounts, and more Canadians moving money between institutions all create more opportunities to slip over the line.
The most common trap remains the re-contribution rule. A saver who withdraws $10,000 in the spring and assumes they can simply put it back in the fall will, in most cases, trigger the one-per-cent monthly tax — the withdrawn room doesn't return until the following January. Transfers between financial institutions handled as a withdrawal-and-redeposit rather than a direct transfer produce the same result. None of this requires bad faith; the penalty applies regardless of intent, which is precisely why the waiver process matters.
The CRA's broader administrative footprint has been shifting at the same time. The agency has been steadily pushing Canadians toward digital self-service, including closing 45 of its physical tax drop boxes after a steep drop in their use. As more of the contribution-tracking burden falls on individuals navigating online accounts, the room for honest error arguably grows.
The CRA Can't Say How Many Penalties It Forgives
The most striking part of the release is what isn't in it. Section 207.06 of the Income Tax Act lets the CRA cancel or waive the excess-contribution tax where the over-contribution arose from a reasonable error and the taxpayer acts to fix it. The access request specifically asked how many of those waiver requests were fully granted, partially granted, or denied, and the total dollar value reduced or cancelled — broken down between amounts fully cancelled and amounts partially reduced.
The CRA was able to provide the number of relief requests received and the total dollars reduced, but not the outcomes. In its response, the agency's Assessment, Benefit and Service Branch stated plainly that it does not track how many waiver requests are fully granted, partially granted, or denied, and therefore could not answer those parts of the request. It said the same about the dollar breakdown: it can report the total amount reduced or cancelled, but has no reports detailing how much was fully cancelled versus partially reduced.
That is a meaningful transparency gap. The waiver counts the agency did release show that demand for relief is substantial. In 2024 the CRA logged 4,073 initial relief requests and 646 reassessment-related requests; in earlier years the numbers ran far higher, with more than 33,000 initial requests in 2010 and over 25,000 in both 2011 and 2012. Yet for none of those years can the public learn how often the agency said yes. For a penalty that so often stems from innocent mistakes, the question of how forgiving the CRA actually is goes directly unanswered — not because the records were withheld, but because the agency says it never compiled them.
What the Relief Dollars Show
The one piece of waiver data the CRA could provide is the dollar value of penalties reduced or cancelled. Those figures show the agency does forgive a substantial amount each year. In 2024, initial-assessment relief totalled about $4.1 million, with another $902,935 tied to reassessments. In several earlier years the reassessment-relief figures were much larger — exceeding $17 million in 2022 and $14.9 million in 2021 — suggesting that a significant portion of forgiven penalties is resolved only after an initial assessment is challenged.
Without the grant-versus-denial counts, though, those dollar totals can't be turned into an approval rate. A reader can see that millions are forgiven annually, but not whether that represents most requests or a small fraction of them. The dollars reveal scale; they don't reveal the odds facing any individual Canadian who files for relief.
What the Data Doesn't Cover
Beyond the missing waiver outcomes, the release is purely numerical. It contains no breakdown by province, age, income, or financial institution, so there's no way to tell from these records whether over-contribution penalties fall more heavily on younger savers, new Canadians, or particular regions. It also doesn't distinguish deliberate over-contribution — a known tax-planning gambit some sophisticated investors have attempted — from honest error. And because the figures are aggregate counts rather than case files, they reveal nothing about how long the waiver process takes or how the CRA exercises its discretion.
What the records do establish is the shape and scale of the program: a penalty that now touches well over 100,000 Canadians a year, generates more than $175 million in annual assessments, and operates alongside a relief mechanism whose success rate the administering agency does not measure.
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Support Government FilesAll figures referenced are from Canada Revenue Agency records released under Access to Information request A-2025-001941, obtained through Canada's access-to-information process. The records contain aggregate annual statistics on TFSA excess-contribution tax assessments, reassessments, taxpayer relief requests under section 207.06 of the Income Tax Act, and the dollar value of penalties reduced or cancelled, for tax years 2009 through early 2026.
