The Québec education savings incentive (QESI) is a tax measure implemented in 2007 to encourage Québec families to save for their children's and grandchildren's post-secondary education, from their infancy. This measure is a refundable tax credit paid directly into a registered education savings plan (RESP).

No paper documents are used in the administration of the QESI. Product developers develop or adapt products so that a trustee participating in the QESI (or the trustee's mandatary) can exchange data with us. All data is exchanged only electronically.

To ensure that the electronic data interchange between the participating financial institution and Revenu Québec is compliant, you must go through the certification process to have your product validated.

Obtaining a notice of certification

To obtain a notice of certification for a product, you must complete the following steps:

1. Register as a Revenu Québec partner.
2. Access My Account for partners to add resource persons and register the product for which you are seeking a notice of certification. 
3. Develop or adapt the product in accordance with the specifications in the following documents:  
   • Québec Education Savings Incentive: Interface Transaction Standards (SW-208-T) (courtesy translation);
   • Québec Education Savings Incentive: Data Interface Operations and Connectivity (SW-209-T) (courtesy translation);
4. Submit the test-case results to us. 
5. Modify the product, if applicable, further to our analysis of the test cases. 
6. Carry out additional test cases, if applicable. 

Once the test-case results meet our requirements, we will email you a notice of certification. The trustee is then authorized to use the product to transmit production files, and we will add the associated promoter's name to our list of RESP providers.

Protocols

Products (whether developed or adapted) must use one of the following protocols for flat file data interchange:

• HTTPS
• FTPS
• SFTP/SSH2
• Axway/PESIT-TSL