CRA audit statistics: 2.97 million returns reviewed in 2023-24, about 1 in 11 filed

The CRA closed 84,356 compliance cases worth $18.1 billion in 2024-25

Fiscal impact isn't cash in the bank. The CRA counts the tax it assessed, the refunds it cut, interest, penalties and tax it expects in the future, and its own footnote says the figure doesn't account for "appeals reversals and uncollected amounts". Keep that in mind before you call all of the $18.1 billion money it collected.

What is the CRA audit rate?

The CRA doesn't publish an audit rate. The closest number it does publish is for its T1 matching program, which checks your return against the slips that your employer, your bank and foreign tax agencies send in. It reviewed 2.97 million individual returns in program year 2023-24, the CRA's 2026 tax gap report says. Canadians filed 32.9 million individual returns in fiscal 2023-24 (CRA). So the number of matching reviews is equal to about 1 in 11 of the returns filed, by our arithmetic.

Treat that as a ceiling. The CRA counts reviews by stream (pre-matching, post-matching and foreign source matching), so one return could appear in more than one. And 307,000 of the reviews were beneficial matching, which found money that the CRA owed back to the taxpayer. If you take those out, it's about 1 in 12. The CRA puts the program reversal rate at 2.4%.

Targeted cases are far rarer. The CRA closed 84,356 targeted audits, examinations and criminal investigations in 2024-25, in a year when Canadians filed 33.2 million individual returns. The CRA lists GST/HST, large business, trust and real estate work among them, so you can't read the ratio as a personal audit rate. Each case averaged about $215,000 of fiscal impact, by our math.

How often does the CRA audit individuals and businesses?

Apart from its 2.97 million matching reviews, the CRA completes from a few dozen to tens of thousands of audits a year per program, not millions. Each of its programs reports its own count, and the latest year on record isn't the same for all of them.

Real estate audits grew in 2024-25. Its completed files rose from 12,733 in 2023-24 to 14,854 in 2024-25, and what it assessed rose 31% to $849.0 million, by our arithmetic on CRA figures. Of those files, 6,652 were about new housing and rental rebates.

Related taxpayers can be audited as a group. By the end of 2024-25 the CRA had added 119 audit teams for what it calls economic entity audits (CRA), which group related, associated or connected entities into one file (CRA). A CRA audit of a business can also reach the owner's personal bank and credit card statements, the same CRA page says.

Most SR&ED claims pass. Of the 23,677 claims it processed in 2025-26, the CRA accepted 90% as they were filed, changed 6% and denied 4%. It allowed $4.6 billion of the $4.9 billion in tax credits claimed (CRA).

What triggers a CRA audit?

A risk score triggers most CRA audits. "The CRA chooses a file for an audit based on a risk assessment," its RC4188 guide says (CRA). It looks at how often errors show up in returns like yours, at any sign that you haven't met your obligations, and at how your file compares with similar ones. What it learns in other audits and investigations can count too.

A slip that doesn't match is enough to start a review, and matching reached 2.97 million returns in 2023-24. It can be as small as a T4 or a T5 that you left off. For a business, the CRA's systems flag a return as high risk and then an officer decides if it needs an audit. If the business is in a sector the CRA sees as high risk for unreported income, the auditor may test its income with an indirect method such as net worth (CRA).

The last random audit of small businesses that the CRA reports is 15 years old. The CRA's 2026 tax gap report says that its most recent random audit of small and medium businesses was for tax year 2011. It hasn't reported a newer one (CRA). Individual returns are different: the CRA still names random selection as one reason a return gets reviewed (CRA).

Some triggers come from a program, not from how you behave. Claims for the pandemic wage subsidy drew more than 4,500 CEWS audits by March 2025. Income tax, GST/HST and new housing rebate files make up the real estate program. It still pays to come forward first: under the Voluntary Disclosures Program rules in force since 1 October 2025, an unprompted application gets 100% penalty relief and 75% interest relief.

How much money do CRA audits bring in?

Targeted CRA cases produced $18.1 billion of fiscal impact in 2024-25, a count that leaves out all its other compliance work. The CRA reports individual compliance activities separately, at $8.2 billion, or $10.75 billion with the checks it did on pandemic benefits (CRA).

The CRA's second overall tax gap report, published in March 2026, puts the 2022 gross gap at $59.5 billion, or 16% of federal tax revenue. If historical trends hold, it projects that audits and collections will bring the net gap down to $34.7 billion, 9.3% of revenue, a potential cut of $24.8 billion. Of the four taxes, the GST/HST gap is projected to shrink the most, by 57% (CRA).

Matching pays for itself many times over. The CRA's 2026 tax gap report says the T1 matching program returns an average of $46 for every $1 that goes into it. The 2.97 million reviews it did in 2023-24 produced $1.57 billion.

Not all fiscal impact gets paid. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated in October 2020 that about 81.3% of the fiscal impact from business compliance work actually materializes, because some assessments fall on objection or appeal (PBO). It also estimated that each extra dollar the CRA spent on business compliance from 2015-16 to 2018-19 raised $3.90 in revenue.

Most of the gap starts on the return itself. The CRA estimates that income people left off and credits they claimed but weren't owed made up 72% of the 2022 gross tax gap, and tax that went unpaid made up the other 28%. The CRA puts the tax gap from the underground economy at about 5% of federal personal income tax revenue.

How many CRA audits end in penalties or prosecution?

Few audits end in court, but in some programs penalties are routine. In its real estate audits the CRA applied 853 penalties in 2024-25, about $103 million in all, and it lists them under the 50% penalty for a false statement made knowingly (CRA). That's roughly 6 penalties for every 100 files closed, by our arithmetic. The rule behind them is the gross negligence penalty in section 163(2) of the Income Tax Act.

Criminal cases are rare. Courts convicted 106 taxpayers of tax evasion between April 2020 and March 2025, for more than $39 million in federal tax, the CRA says. Jail terms for 49 of them added up to more than 98 years (CRA).

The pandemic subsidy audits drew penalties as well. By March 2025 the CRA had assessed $21.8 million in CEWS penalties, and it had denied or cut $840 million of the $15.9 billion in claims that it audited.

Time limits cap how far back any of this reaches. The CRA normally has three years from the original notice of assessment for individuals and CCPCs, and four for other corporations. The reassessment period page lists the exceptions.

How many taxpayers dispute a CRA audit, and how often do they win?

Taxpayers filed 128,386 objections in 2024-25, up 47% from 87,543 a year earlier, and the CRA finished 118,077 (CRA). That's close to double the roughly 68,000 of 2018-19, per CRA data The Globe and Mail published in December 2025.

People who object often win something. Over the past seven fiscal years, the CRA agreed with an objection in full or in part 55% of the time on average, the Globe reported from agency data.

The wait is long. As of October 2026, the CRA's tracker shows medium complexity income tax objections resolved in August 2026 took 403 days on average, and low complexity ones 145 days (CRA). High complexity files, 2% to 3% of the workload, can take over 690 days. In 2024-25 the CRA met its standard 76% of the time for low complexity objections and 71% for medium ones.

The window to object is short. A corporation gets 90 days from the date of its notice of reassessment, and an individual gets the later of 90 days or a year after the filing due date. The objection deadline page covers extensions. Accountants can also put that question to Whizi's Canadian CPA agent, which runs a web search on every question and lists its sources.

Few disputes get as far as a judge. Of all the appeals that the Tax Court of Canada has, 80% are about income tax, 18% are about GST/HST and 2% are about EI, CPP and OAS. That split is in the minutes of a Canadian Bar Association liaison meeting with the Court in November 2025 (minutes). People who represent themselves or use an agent bring 80% of its informal procedure appeals.

Complaints about service are climbing too. The Taxpayers' Ombudsperson received 3,558 complaints in 2025-26, up 27%, and over half involved CRA processing delays (OTO).

Where do these CRA audit statistics come from?

We opened every figure on 15 October 2026 at its source: the CRA's results reports, tax gap report and program pages, the Taxpayers' Ombudsperson and the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Two come from reporting, named as such. The Globe and Mail's objection figures came from the CRA, and the Tax Court's appeal mix comes from Canadian Bar Association minutes. The 1 in 11, $215,000 a case and 6 in 100 figures are our arithmetic on CRA numbers.

We left out what we couldn't trace. That cut the 2018-19 small business audit totals still quoted in trade press, a 63% objection success rate we couldn't find at its source, and consultancy guesses at how many SR&ED claims get reviewed. CRA fiscal years run April to March, and tax gap figures run by tax year.

These are statistics, not advice on a file. For a live audit, talk to a CPA or a tax lawyer.

How should you cite these CRA audit statistics?

You're free to use any figure or table on this page with a link back to it. Please credit the CRA or the original publisher too. A plain credit line like this one works:

Source: Whizi Research, "CRA audit statistics: 2.97 million returns reviewed in 2023-24, about 1 in 11 filed", whizi.io/resources/cra-audit-statistics, updated October 2026.

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