The Service Canada letters worth keeping in a folder

Dear reader,

Most retirement paperwork arrives in plain envelopes, looks routine and goes into a drawer with the hydro bills. That is fine for most of it. But a handful of the letters that Service Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency send to people over 60 are worth more than a drawer, because together they are the only paper trail of how your public pensions were worked out, taxed and renewed.

This letter goes through them one at a time: what each document is, when it usually turns up, what to look at before filing it, and how long it is sensible to keep it. Several of the documents have their own enclosure on this site, linked below.

Why a folder beats a drawer

Almost every question you might one day have about a pension is answered by a piece of paper you received years earlier. Why did the payment change in January? Was tax taken off? When exactly did the pension start, and at what age? Did the supplement stop because a return was late? Service Canada keeps its own records, of course, and much of it can be seen in My Service Canada Account. But the online views only reach back so far: the CPP payment history shows the current year and the two before it, and CPP tax slips are available for the current year and the last six.¹ Paper you kept yourself has no such window.

There is a second, practical reason. The CRA’s general guidance is to keep tax records for six years from the end of the tax year they relate to.² The pension slips are tax records, so they belong with each year’s return in any case.

The letter that starts a benefit

Whether it is the Canada Pension Plan retirement pension or Old Age Security, the first important document is the one that confirms the benefit and its starting amount. For OAS, many people never apply at all: Service Canada sends an enrolment letter around the 64th birthday to those it already has enough information about, and a letter inviting an application to everyone else.³ Why you got one rather than the other is explained in our letter on OAS enrolment.

What to check: your name, date of birth and the start date. If you intend to delay OAS, the enrolment letter is the moment to say so, which is why the arithmetic of waiting is worth reading before you file it away. Keep it: for as long as the benefit is paid. It is the document that shows what was decided and when.

The two tax slips each February

Every year, anyone who received CPP gets a T4A(P), and anyone who received OAS gets a T4A(OAS). Most slips are sent by the end of February, and electronic copies appear in My Service Canada Account from 1 February.¹ If you live outside Canada, the CPP and OAS amounts come on an NR4 instead, and that slip can take until the end of March.

What to check: on the T4A(P), box 20 is the taxable amount and box 22 is the income tax deducted; on the T4A(OAS), box 18 is the taxable pension and box 21 is any Guaranteed Income Supplement paid. The CPP figure in box 20 is often not twelve times your monthly payment, for reasons that are entirely normal, and we take the slip apart box by box in how to read a T4A(P) slip without guessing. Keep them: with that year’s return, for six years.

The folder at a glance

Document	When it comes	Keep
CPP or OAS approval / enrolment letter	When the benefit is decided; OAS around age 64	While the benefit is paid*
T4A(P) and T4A(OAS)	By the end of February	Six years, with the return
NR4 (non-residents)	Possibly by the end of March	Six years, with the return
GIS renewal letter	July	Until the next one, with the return*
Statement of Contributions	When requested	Latest copy and the T4s behind it*
Notices of assessment	After each return is assessed	Six years

Keeping times marked * are our suggestion, not an official rule. The six-year period is the CRA’s general record-keeping guidance. Illustrative overview only; your own situation may call for keeping papers longer.

The July letter for anyone on the supplement

The Guaranteed Income Supplement is reviewed every year from the tax return. Service Canada asks recipients to file by April 30, and in July sends a letter saying whether the benefit has been renewed, stopped, started or resumed, or whether more income information is needed.⁴ If that letter does not arrive, the official advice is to call as soon as possible.

What to check: the new monthly amount and the income figure it was based on. Keep it: until the following July, filed with the return that produced it. The chain between the two is explained in why the GIS depends on filing a tax return every year.

The record you have to ask for

The CPP Statement of Contributions is the one document on this list that does not arrive on its own. You view it in My Service Canada Account or ask for a copy to be mailed.⁵ It lists your pensionable earnings and contributions year by year from age 18, with letter codes beside some years, and it is the foundation of the retirement pension. Service Canada asks people to compare it with their T4 slips and to get in touch straight away if something is wrong.

Keep: the latest copy, and any old T4 slips or employer letters that support a year you might need to question. How to read it, and why time matters if a figure is wrong, is in what your CPP Statement of Contributions is really telling you.

Letters that come with life changes

A few documents only appear when something changes at home: a pension-sharing approval between spouses, a credit-split decision after a separation, or the paperwork that follows a death in the family. They are worth their own pocket in the folder, because they permanently change how one or two pensions are calculated. The folder on family and estate covers the credit split and the CPP death benefit.

The envelope that does not belong in the folder

Not every letter or message that mentions Service Canada comes from it. Service Canada warns that fraudulent emails, letters and text messages sometimes use what looks like its letterhead.⁶ A real letter will not ask you to reply by text with your Social Insurance Number or to follow a link to “release” a payment. If anything in the post looks off, read the scam letters and texts that imitate Service Canada before replying.

Important

Keep originals of anything that confirms a decision: approval letters, sharing or credit-split decisions, and any letter about an overpayment. Copies are fine for slips you can download again; decisions are harder to reconstruct.

Who this matters for, and what to check this week

The folder matters most to three groups: people turning 64 or 65 in the next year, anyone receiving the GIS, and anyone who has moved, separated or lost a spouse recently. If you are in one of them, a short check is enough:

• Find last year’s T4A(P) and T4A(OAS) and file them with the return they belong to.
• Look for the July GIS letter if you receive the supplement, and call Service Canada if it never came.
• Check that the address on file is current; letters follow the address, not the person.
• Print or save your Statement of Contributions once, and put it in the CPP pocket.

The short version

None of this paperwork asks much of you: read it once, keep it in one place. When a payment changes or a question comes up years later, the answer is already in the folder.

P.S. If you only do one thing this autumn, find last year’s two pension slips and put them with the return they belong to. Next Tuesday’s letter looks at what to expect in February; the reply card is below.