Filing your own income tax return in Canada, and you'd like to see the whole map before you start? This guide walks the full route: choosing the right edition, creating your account, pulling your slips straight from the CRA with Auto-fill, the review you should never skip, filing through NETFILE — and what happens after.
A JCO Bookkeeping tutorial by Jeremy Ortega, founder of JCO Bookkeeping Firm · Milton, Ontario. Written for the 2025 tax year, following the Do It Yourself route most self-filers use.
FREE GUIDE · WATCH OR READ⚠️ Education, not tax advice: this page is general educational information about using tax software. It is not personal tax advice — every situation is different. Confirm your own situation at canada.ca or with a qualified tax professional.
🎬 JCO Bookkeeping's own TurboTax Canada tutorial — made for the JCO Academy, narrated by Kuya Jay, our AI presenter, in JCO's friendly Taglish teaching style. Prefer reading? The same route is written out below.
TurboTax Canada is Intuit's software for preparing your Canadian T1 tax return. It works like an interview, not an exam: it asks plain questions about your life and your work, and fills in the right forms behind the scenes. You don't need the forms memorized — you need honest answers. TurboTax products for the 2025 tax year are certified by the CRA for NETFILE, the government's electronic filing service.
There are three ways to use it: Do It Yourself (you do it all, guided by the software), Expert Assist (you still drive, with a live tax expert you can ask and a final review), and Expert Full Service (an expert does everything for you). This guide follows Do It Yourself — the route most self-filers take.
There are four Do It Yourself editions, and the right one depends on what's in your return:
For simple returns only: employment income from a T4, pension, employment insurance, RRSP contributions, child care expenses and tuition. Donations, medical expenses, investments, rental or self-employment income are not covered here.
Adds donations, medical expenses and employment expenses — and searches 400+ deductions and credits so you don't miss the ones you qualify for.
For investors: capital gains and losses, investment income from T5 and T3 slips, and foreign income.
The top tier: self-employment income and expenses on the T2125 — side gigs, freelance work — plus rental income.
Prices on the paid editions can change during the season, so check the current price on the official site before you file. The friendly part: you can start for free, and you only pay when you're ready to file.
Go to turbotax.intuit.ca, choose Do It Yourself, and sign up with your email. That becomes your Intuit account, and your return is saved inside it — you can stop halfway and come back later without losing anything.
When you enter, TurboTax asks about your situation: single or married, kids, a job, investments, a business. Your answers decide which edition it recommends and which questions appear later. Filed with TurboTax last year? It can import your information. Coming from other software? You can upload the PDF of your previous T1 return to pre-fill your personal details.
And remember: you haven't paid anything yet. If you picked a paid edition, payment happens at the end, right before filing.
Ten minutes of gathering now saves an hour of hunting later. Have these ready:
Inside TurboTax, choose the option to connect to the CRA. You sign in to CRA My Account, and the CRA itself sends the tax information it already holds into your return: the T4, T5 and other slips your employers and banks already submitted, your RRSP deduction limit, and your NETFILE access code. You pick which items to import — and you review every single one before moving on.
Two warnings, both important:
Think of Auto-fill as a head start — never as a substitute for checking.
The interview walks you through every kind of income. If you used Auto-fill, your slips are already there — your job now is to match each number against the paper slip in your hand. If a box on screen differs from the paper, believe the paper and fix the screen. No Auto-fill? Type the T4 boxes exactly as printed. Two employers means two T4s. Then add anything else: pension, employment insurance, tips, and interest from a T5.
Side gig, freelance work or a small business? That lives in the self-employment section — the T2125 — where you report the business's total income and its expenses. It's also why that income needs the Self-Employed edition. The rule underneath it all: report every dollar. The CRA sees your slips too, and a forgotten slip is exactly the kind of mismatch that starts their questions.
This is where your tax goes down — or your refund goes up. The interview asks about the ones people miss most:
Paid editions include an optimizer that hunts for credits and suggests which spouse should claim items like donations or medical expenses. But no optimizer can find a receipt you never mentioned — every claim needs a document behind it, kept for at least six years, because the CRA can ask to see it.
As you type, a refund tracker on screen moves with your numbers — your running estimate of a refund, or of a balance owing. When you reach the review section, TurboTax scans your return and flags errors and warnings: missing information, numbers that don't look right, credits you may have missed. Fix every error before you continue.
Then double-check the simplest things, because they're where most mistakes live:
Five minutes of checking now can save weeks of fixing later.
Review clean? Time to submit. If you're on a paid edition, this is where you pay; then you press submit and your return travels to the CRA through NETFILE. Within moments, the CRA answers with a confirmation number — your proof that they received it. Write it down, and save or print the PDF copy of your return to keep with your slips and receipts.
Quick self-check, JCO style: Which step did Auto-fill get its information from? If you're self-employed, which deadline is for filing and which is for paying? And if you spot a mistake after filing, what do you wait for before adjusting? If you can answer all three, you're ready. (The steps above have you covered.)
It depends on your return. Free covers simple returns — employment income from a T4, pension, EI, RRSP contributions, child care and tuition. Deluxe adds donations, medical expenses and employment expenses. Premier adds investments, capital gains and foreign income. Self-Employed covers business, side-gig and rental income on the T2125. You can start free and pay only when you're ready to file. See Step 1.
It connects TurboTax to your CRA My Account, and the CRA sends the tax information it already holds — slips like T4s and T5s, your RRSP deduction limit and your NETFILE access code — straight into your return. You choose what to import and still check every number. Slips the CRA hasn't received yet won't appear, and things the CRA doesn't track — medical expenses, child care — you enter yourself from your receipts. See Step 4.
The CRA sends a confirmation number — your proof of filing. Your Express NOA can appear inside the software once the CRA processes your return, and the NOA is the official record of your refund or balance and your RRSP room. Refunds typically arrive in about eight business days by direct deposit, or up to six weeks by cheque. If you later find a mistake, wait for your NOA, then adjust with ReFILE or Change My Return. See Step 8.
When your slips are gathered and you're ready, file on TurboTax Canada's official website:
That button is a plain link to the official site — check the current editions and prices there before you pay. For official tax information straight from the source, the CRA lives at canada.ca.
⚠️ Education, not tax advice: one last time, because it matters — this guide and the video above are JCO Bookkeeping's general educational material about using tax software, not personal tax advice for your situation. Tax rules change and personal circumstances differ; confirm your own at canada.ca or with a qualified tax professional. TurboTax is a registered trademark of Intuit Inc.; this is JCO Bookkeeping's own guide, and it is not published or endorsed by Intuit or the CRA.