Advance Payments of the Tax Credit for Childcare Expenses
If you meet the requirements, you can receive advance payments of the tax credit for childcare expenses instead of waiting to claim the tax credit when you file your income tax return.
You must be registered for direct deposit to receive advance payments of this tax credit. See Direct Deposit for ways to register.
The number of advance payments you receive in the year depends on when we receive a complete application from you—not the number of days your child attends daycare. To receive 12 equal payments, you must file your application and the required documents by December 1 of the year preceding the year covered by your application. If we receive your application after that date, the amount will be divided over the number of months remaining in the year after your application is processed.
Before applying, take the time to figure out how many days your child will go to daycare in the year. Your daycare provider can help you.
If your child is starting kindergarten, make sure you take this into account to avoid having to pay back an overpayment.
View your application
Use the online service for managing your advance payment file in My Account for individuals to check whether your application was accepted or see the date and amount of your last payment.
Change your application
You can change your application using the online service for managing your advance payment file in My Account for individuals. Use the service to:
- add one or more children to your application;
- request that advance payments be stopped for one or more children because their situation has changed (e.g. a child started attending kindergarten or subsidized daycare, you no longer meet the requirements, etc.);
- change personal information (e.g. information about your spouse, income or education);
- change information about the daycare (e.g. new unsubsidized daycare, new rate or change in number of attendance days).
If your child stops going to daycare, you have two options for your advance payments:
- You can have us stop the payments for the child immediately. You will get the rest of your tax credit for the year after filing your income tax return and Schedule C.
- You can adjust the number of days of daycare in your original application. We will recalculate your advance payments and, if you are still entitled to them, you will continue to receive them on the 15th of every month until the end of the year. Note, however, that reducing the number of days may mean that you are no longer entitled to advance payments.