Average Tax Refund by Province: What the CRA Publishes
Searches for an average refund by province return numbers that the CRA has never published. Here is what the CRA does publish, verified against its own tables, and why the provincial figure does not exist.
By Rashad Bayram | Published: 4/27/2026
Short answer: the Canada Revenue Agency does not publish an average tax refund by province. It publishes national refund totals during each filing season, and it publishes detailed provincial tables after returns are processed, but those two things never meet. The provincial table has no refund column. Any figure you find labelled "average refund in Alberta" or "average refund in Ontario" was estimated by whoever published it. The CRA has never reported one. This article shows what the CRA does publish, with the numbers checked against its own tables, and explains why the provincial breakdown people search for is missing. Rewritten August 11, 2026 after verifying every source directly. Why this article changed An earlier version of this page said the provincial figures were coming, and that the CRA's detailed tables lagged by about two years so the wait was simply a matter of time. That was wrong in two ways, and both are worth stating plainly rather than quietly correcting. The newer tables arrived. The CRA's Individual Income Tax Return Statistics now runs through the 2024 tax year , published as its 2026 edition and built from returns processed up to a cut-off of November 30, 2025. So the wait is over. The wait was never the problem. Opening the 2024-tax-year tables and reading the column headers settles it: no provincial table carries a refund figure, and none of the earlier editions did either. Details below. What the CRA actually publishes about refunds Two separate CRA publications carry refund data, and they answer different questions. Filing-season statistics report initial assessing data while a season is running. They are national totals: returns received, share filed electronically, refunds issued, total refund dollars, and the split between direct deposit and cheque. They are updated through the year. They contain nothing by province. Individual Income Tax Return Statistics (formerly the T1 Final Statistics) come later, after returns are fully processed. This is the publication that breaks data out by province and territory. Its 2026 edition covers the 2024 tax year , built from returns processed up to a cut-off of November 30, 2025; the 2025 edition covers 2023; the 2022-tax-year edition is now archived. That second publication is where the provincial refund figure would live if it existed. It ships four tables: Table Breaks down by Carries a refund figure? Table 1 Province and territory No Table 2 Province (one file each), by income range No Table 3 Province, by source of income No Table 4 Age and gender No Two of those are worth opening, because they are the ones that could plausibly carry the number. Table 1 is the summary cut by province. After the label columns (province, tax year, return type) its measures are: number of returns, total income assessed, total deductions, taxable income assessed, total non-refundable tax credits, net federal tax, net provincial tax, and total tax payable. Tax payable is the last one. Table 2 is the detailed one, published as a separate file for each province and territory ( Alberta's, for example ), and it goes much further: 106 line items per province. It is the strongest candidate, so it is worth being specific about where it ends. Items 102 to 106 are the Canada Training Credit, the multigenerational home renovation tax credit, the eligible educator school supply tax credit, net provincial or territorial tax, and total tax payable. There is no item 48400, and no item called Refund. The only line containing the word at all is item 89, "Total federal non-refundable tax credits", which is a different thing entirely. That is the whole answer. Line 48400 Refund exists on the T1 return, and the CRA reports it nationally, but its provincial tables stop one step earlier at what you owe. Anyone quoting a provincial average has estimated it, derived it from microdata, or taken it from a vendor's own customer base. The national numbers, and which year they actually describe Filing seasons and tax years get conflated constantly, including in the earlier version of this article, so here is the distinction. A filing season is named for the calendar year it runs in, and it mostly processes the previous year's returns. The CRA states this in its own footnotes : for the 2025 filing season, 2024 tax year returns are the current ones. The figures most often quoted for "the average Canadian refund" come from Statistics Canada, and they describe the 2024 filing season , which ran from February 8, 2024 to January 27, 2025 and processed mostly 2023 tax year returns: Total refunds paid : $43.8 billion Canadians receiving a refund : 19.1 million Average refund : $2,295 Those are Statistics Canada's numbers , published February 18, 2025. A note on a figure this article used to carry. An earlier version reported a national average of $2,294 attributed to the CRA's filing-season summary. That figure does not appear on the CRA page, and it cannot: the CRA's own "average amount per return" column is rounded to the nearest $1,000, so it displays $2,000. The $2,294 has been removed rather than re-sourced. Comparing two filing seasons at the same point The CRA's filing-season page is updated through the year, so a mid-season number only means something next to the same point in another season. The two snapshots below sit about two weeks apart in season terms, which makes them roughly comparable: Measure 2025 season, to Aug 25 2025 2026 season, to Aug 10 2026 Returns received 32,578,340 32,831,140 Filed electronically 93% 94% Refunds issued 18,659,500 18,875,700 Total refund dollars $44.08 billion $45.24 billion Average refund (computed) about $2,362 about $2,397 Refunds by direct deposit 80% 80% Three things about that table matter more than the numbers do. The averages are arithmetic, not quotations. The CRA's own average column reads $2,000 in both seasons because of the $1,000 rounding. Dividing total refund dollars by refunds issued gives $2,362 and $2,397. That division is the only way to get a usable figure, and it is worth knowing that is what any published "average Canadian refund" is doing too. Neither season is finished. The 2026 season runs to January 2027. Both columns will keep climbing, so neither is a final-year figure. A season is not a tax year. The CRA notes that its initial-assessment counts include returns for every tax year assessed during that season, so late and amended filings from earlier years sit inside these totals. The CRA does not publish the split, so treat a season figure as a season figure. Why refunds vary by province The CRA has not published the provincial spread, so nobody can rank the provinces from its data. The reasons a spread exists are still worth understanding, because they explain why a national average is a poor guide to any individual outcome. 1. Provincial tax rates differ Federal brackets are the same countrywide, and every province and territory layers its own rate schedule on top. Two people earning the same gross income in different provinces face different total liabilities, which changes whether payroll withholding overshoots and produces a refund. 2. Refundable credits land differently Refundable credits, including the GST/HST credit and the Canada Workers Benefit, are paid out whether or not tax is owed, so they affect what lands back in a filer's hands. Their uptake is not evenly distributed across provinces. The CRA does not publish the provincial effect on refunds, so the size of this factor is not something to put a number against. 3. Demographic mix differs Employment income is subject to payroll withholding through the year in a way that pension and investment income generally is not, so a province's mix of workers and retirees shapes how much tax is prepaid and therefore how much comes back. The CRA publishes filer counts by age in Table 4 , but not the refund consequence. 4. Quebec files provincially through Revenu Québec Quebec residents file a separate provincial return with Revenu Québec alongside the federal T1. Federal numbers reported by the CRA therefore cover only part of a Quebec resident's position, which makes Quebec the least comparable province in any federal-only figure. What this means if you are filing A national average is a description of 19 million other people. It is a poor target and a worse benchmark. A refund is returned money, not a gain. It means more tax was withheld through the year than was owed. A smaller refund is not a worse outcome, and a larger one is not a better one. Individual circumstances dominate. Marital status, dependants, employment versus self-employment, RRSP and FHSA contributions, and credit eligibility all move an individual result. A licensed CPA or chartered professional accountant is the right person to work out which apply to you. If you would rather see your own withholding position through the year than discover it in April, you can track deductions and credits as you go . What this means if you are an accountant The practical implication is a caution rather than a technique. If a client asks how their refund compares to others in their province, the accurate answer is that the CRA has not published that comparison, and any figure offering one is an estimate of unknown provenance. Do not benchmark against a provincial average. There isn't a published one. Filing-season national totals are national, and the provincial tables carry no refund column. Quebec needs both halves. A Quebec client's position is only complete with the federal CRA result and the Revenu Québec result together. What does travel well is a client's own year-over-year comparison, which uses their actual numbers instead of a population statistic. For firms wanting that in one place, the platform features for accountants cover client-level expense and credit tracking. How TaxFormify fits into this picture TaxFormify is a tax management platform for individual taxpayers and tax accountants. It helps Canadian taxpayers track expenses, deductions, and credits across the year, which is the part that determines whether April brings a refund, a balance owing, or something close to zero. Nothing here changes what the CRA publishes. What the platform can do is make a household's or a client's own numbers visible earlier, so a conversation about refunds rests on real figures rather than a national average that describes nobody in particular. You can create an account , or read more about the platform's features first. How this article was verified Every figure above was read from its source in August 2026 rather than taken from a summary. The CRA's filing-season page was read live, the 2025 season figures came from an archived copy of the same page, and the province table was downloaded as CSV and its column headers checked one by one. The Statistics Canada figures came from its own article. Two claims from earlier versions were removed because they could not be supported: the $2,294 national average, which appears on no CRA page, and the statement that provincial refund averages are published and show Alberta and the territories at the high end. Both had been carried forward without a source behind them. Frequently Asked Questions What is the average tax refund by province in Canada? The CRA does not publish one. Its provincial tables, in the Individual Income Tax Return Statistics, break out returns, income, deductions, credits, and tax payable by province and territory, and stop there. There is no refund column. Figures circulating under headings like "average refund by province" are estimates from other sources, not CRA-reported numbers. What is the average Canadian tax refund nationally? Statistics Canada reported $43.8 billion paid to 19.1 million Canadians during the 2024 filing season (February 8, 2024 to January 27, 2025), an average of $2,295. For the 2026 filing season, CRA figures published to August 10, 2026 show 18,875,700 refunds totalling $45,243,128,000, which works out to about $2,397 per refund. That second figure is arithmetic on CRA totals, because the CRA's own average column is rounded to the nearest $1,000 and displays $2,000. Which province has the highest average refund? There is no published answer. The CRA has not released average refunds by province for any tax year, so no ranking can be drawn from its data. Anyone presenting one is estimating. Why is Quebec different from the other provinces? Quebec residents file a separate provincial return with Revenu Québec in addition to the federal T1. Federal-only figures therefore capture just one part of a Quebec resident's refund position, and a full picture needs both the CRA and the Revenu Québec results. Does a bigger refund mean a province's tax system is better? No. A refund is money that was over-withheld during the year being returned. A larger average refund reflects withholding patterns, refundable-credit uptake, and who lives in the province, rather than whether its tax structure is favourable. A province with lower headline rates can show smaller refunds simply because less was withheld to begin with. What is the difference between a filing season and a tax year? A filing season is named for the calendar year it runs in and mostly processes the previous year's returns. The CRA states that for the 2025 filing season, 2024 tax year returns are the current ones. Its season totals also include late and amended returns from earlier years, so a season figure and a tax-year figure are not the same thing. Are these figures the same as what tax-software vendors report? No. Vendors report from their own user base, which is a sample of filers rather than all of them. The CRA's statistics come from the returns it actually processes. Disclaimer This article is for general informational purposes and describes published statistics, not tax treatment. Tax laws change frequently and individual situations vary. TaxFormify does not provide tax advice. Consult a chartered professional accountant for guidance on your specific circumstances. Updated for tax year 2025. Sources All URLs below were fetched and read on 2026-08-11 unless noted. Canada Revenue Agency, Individual income tax return statistics for the 2026 tax-filing season. Source of the 2026 season figures, the rounding footnote, and the filing-season versus tax-year footnotes. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/corporate/about-canada-revenue-agency-cra/individual-income-tax-return-statistics.html Canada Revenue Agency, Individual income tax return statistics for the 2025 tax-filing season. Source of the 2025 season comparison figures, read from an archived copy of the page captured 2025-08-30. http://web.archive.org/web/20250830063144/https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/corporate/about-canada-revenue-agency-cra/individual-income-tax-return-statistics.html Canada Revenue Agency, Individual Income Tax Return Statistics (formerly T1 Final Statistics), landing page. Confirms which editions are current and which are archived. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/programs/about-canada-revenue-agency-cra/income-statistics-gst-hst-statistics/t1-final-statistics.html Canada Revenue Agency, Individual Income Tax Return Statistics (2024 tax year). The 2026 edition, cut-off November 30, 2025, and its four-table structure. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/programs/about-canada-revenue-agency-cra/income-statistics-gst-hst-statistics/t1-final-statistics/2024-tax-year.html Canada Revenue Agency, Table 1, General statement by province and territory of taxation, 2024 tax year (CSV). The province table whose column headers are quoted above. Downloaded and inspected directly. https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/cra-arc/prog-policy/stats/t1-final-stats/2024-tax-year/tbl1_ac_en.csv Statistics Canada, "Time for taxes." Published 2025-02-18. Source of the $43.8 billion, 19.1 million and $2,295 figures and the February 8, 2024 to January 27, 2025 period. https://www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/7780-time-taxes Canada Revenue Agency, Line 48400 Refund. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/topics/about-your-tax-return/tax-return/completing-a-tax-return/deductions-credits-expenses/line-48400-refund.html Canada Revenue Agency, Tax refunds. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/topics/about-your-tax-return/refunds.html Canada Revenue Agency, Tax rates and income brackets for individuals. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/frequently-asked-questions-individuals/canadian-income-tax-rates-individuals-current-previous-years.html Revenu Québec, Income Tax Return. https://www.revenuquebec.ca/en/citizens/income-tax-return/