Personal Tax -> Payroll calculators and other tax calculators

Payroll Tax Calculators

To calculate your estimated annual take home pay, see our online Canadian Tax Calculator, which is available for all provinces and territories except Québec, which has its own calculator.  Input your income from different sources to calculate your federal & provincial/territorial taxes and CPP and EI premiums.  Input an RRSP deduction amount to see how much tax can be saved.  These calculators calculate annual deductions.  When the annual amounts are divided by the number of pay periods in a year, they will not equal a person's deductions from an individual pay period.  The main reason for this is that CPP and EI premiums are charged on all earnings until the maximum for the year is reached, after which no premiums are deducted until the start of the next year.  Also, income tax rate changes are sometimes announced after payroll deduction tables are prepared for the year.  In this case, the tables are revised effective July 1st.

If you want to calculate the deduction amounts for an individual pay period, see the following tax calculators provided by Canada Revenue Agency (CRA):

To use the CRA payroll deductions online calculator, you need to know the TD1 Claim Code for the person whose take home pay is being calculated.  This is the code which changes depending on how many deductions a person has.  See our article on TD1 forms, which includes links to obtain the forms from CRA, and links to obtain the equivalent forms used in Québec.

The CRA online calculators can be used by an employer to calculate payroll deductions for employees.  They can also be used by an individual to check their own take home pay, or to estimate what their take home pay would be in different circumstances.  If you are an employee using the calculators, make sure you include taxable benefits in your income for the calculations.  If you find that your deductions do not seem to be correct, you should ensure that your employer has current TD1 forms for you, both federal and provincial.

Because payroll deduction rates can change semi-annually, if you are using the downloaded software you should get on the CRA electronic mailing list service for payroll deductions, so you can be notified when new rates are available, or if there is a change in the software.

If you prefer to calculate deductions manually, you can get instructions and the payroll deduction tables from the CRA web page on Calculating deductions.

To calculate payroll taxes for Québec, download the WinRAS program from Revenu Québec.  See also General information - Source deductions and contributions on Revenu Québec website.

Revised: May 24, 2013