Average Tax Refund by Canadian Province for the 2024 Tax Year
The CRA issued $43.8 billion in refunds for the 2024 tax year. Here's the average by province, the methodology, and why it varies.
By TaxFormify | Published: 4/27/2026
How Tax Refunds Varied Across Canadian Provinces for the 2024 Tax Year The Canada Revenue Agency issued more than 19 million refunds during the 2024 tax-filing season, with a national average of $2,294 CAD per refund (CRA, Individual income tax return statistics for the 2025 tax-filing season). Statistics Canada cross-validates the figure at $2,295, drawn from $43.8 billion paid out to 19.1 million Canadians between February 8, 2024 and January 27, 2025. Provincial averages cluster around the national number but diverge meaningfully at the high and low ends, driven by differences in provincial tax rates, refundable-credit uptake, and demographic mix. This article presents what the CRA publishes, where the provincial breakdown actually comes from, and why the spread exists. Updated for tax year 2024. What the CRA actually publishes about refunds Two distinct CRA publications drive reliable refund statistics in Canada: Filing-season statistics ("Individual income tax return statistics for the 2025 tax-filing season") summarize initial assessing data while the season is still active. They are fast, broad, and report national totals — returns received, share filed online, share refunded by direct deposit, total refund dollars, and the national average refund. They do not break down refunds by province at the line-item level. Individual Income Tax Return Statistics (formerly the T1 Final Statistics) are released later, after returns are fully processed. These are the line-item tables — including Line 48400 Refund — broken out by province and territory of residence. They typically lag the tax year by roughly two years. The most recent Open Government release confirmed by the publisher covers tax year 2022, with data processed through June 30, 2024 and released February 7, 2025. A separate CRA publication, Individual Tax Statistics by Tax Bracket (2026 Edition, 2024 tax year) , was released February 18, 2026 with initial-assessment data through November 30, 2025. It reports filer counts, taxable income, and net federal tax by province and tax bracket, but does not include a Line 48400 Refund column. It is the right cross-reference for provincial filer composition for the 2024 tax year, not for provincial average refunds. The practical implication: a clean province-by-province Line 48400 average for the 2024 tax year is not yet published. National figures below come from the 2024 filing-season summary; structural provincial commentary draws on the most recent final-statistics edition (tax year 2022). National numbers for the 2024 tax year According to the CRA's filing-season summary and Statistics Canada's "Time for taxes" article: Returns received : more than 33 million income tax and benefit returns Returns filed electronically : roughly 93% Refunds issued : more than 19 million (Statistics Canada cites 19.1 million) Total refund dollars : $43.8 billion (Statistics Canada) Average refund : $2,294 (CRA filing-season summary) / $2,295 (Statistics Canada) Refunds via direct deposit : 79% The minor difference between the two averages reflects the slightly different reference periods and rounding conventions of the two publications, not a substantive disagreement. Provincial breakdown — where the published data actually comes from The most recent CRA Individual Income Tax Return Statistics edition with provincial Line 48400 Refund data covers the 2022 tax year. Provincial averages from that edition show the structural pattern: meaningful differences across provinces, with Alberta and the territories typically at the higher end and the Atlantic provinces toward the lower end. The 2023-tax-year edition is expected during 2025 from the Open Government Portal, and the 2024-tax-year edition follows the same lag. Because the 2024 final statistics are not yet published, presenting a precise provincial 2024 dollar figure here would require synthesizing data the CRA itself has not yet released. The accurate course is to describe the structural drivers and update this article when the 2024-tax-year provincial line-item tables are published. Readers who want the underlying numbers can pull them from the CRA's published tables — the 2022-tax-year edition is currently available on the Open Government Portal in CSV and PDF, and the 2023- and 2024-tax-year editions will appear at the same canada.ca landing page as they are released. Why refunds vary by province Four structural drivers explain most of the province-to-province spread that the final statistics show year after year: 1. Provincial tax rates differ Federal tax brackets are the same across the country, but every province and territory layers its own rate schedule on top. The CRA publishes the combined federal-plus-provincial rates and brackets at its tax rates page. A taxpayer with the same gross income in Alberta and in Nova Scotia faces different total tax liabilities, which in turn affects whether withholding overshoots and produces a larger refund. 2. Refundable credit