If your corporation's Alberta income tax notices have not shown up in the mail lately, that is not an oversight — it is the new default. Since April 1, 2026, Alberta's Tax and Revenue Administration (TRA) delivers most corporate income tax correspondence electronically through TRA Client Self-Service (TRACS) rather than by paper mail. Four months in, this is a good point for Alberta owners to confirm the switch has not quietly cost them a deadline they didn't know was running.
What changed on April 1
TRA now treats online mail through TRACS as the default delivery method for corporate income tax (CIT) correspondence, including statements of account, notices of assessment, and notices of reassessment. The change applies to:
- all new corporations incorporated with the Alberta Corporate Registry on or after the transition date,
- existing corporations that already have a TRACS account, and
- corporations that have given a third-party organization (TPO) — typically an accountant or bookkeeper — access to their CIT account in TRACS.
Source: Alberta.ca — TRACS online mail transition.
If none of those three conditions apply to your corporation — no TRACS account, and no third-party organization enrolled on your behalf — notices of assessment and reassessment will still arrive on paper for now. But there is one exception even for those businesses, and it is easy to miss.
The one thing that stopped for everyone: paper statements of account
Regardless of TRACS enrolment status, TRA stopped mailing statements of account to all corporations as of April 1, 2026. That information — running account balances, instalment activity, interest and penalty postings — is now viewable only inside TRACS. A completed Request to Receive Notices by Paper Mail covers notices of assessment and reassessment; it does not bring the statement of account back by mail.
Source: Alberta.ca — Tax and Revenue Administration Client Self-Service (TRACS).
In practice, that means an Alberta corporation with no TRACS login has no ongoing paper-based way to see whether its account balance, interest, or instalment postings look right between assessments. If nobody at the business — owner, bookkeeper, or accountant — is enrolled in TRACS, the account is effectively going unmonitored.
Why this matters more than it looks: the objection clock starts on the posting date, not the day you notice it
The part of this change with real financial teeth is timing. A notice of assessment or reassessment posted in TRACS is treated as received on the date it is posted — whether or not anyone has actually logged in and looked at it. That posting date is also the date the clock starts on your right to object.
Alberta's Corporate Income Tax Act information circular sets out the standard rule: a notice of objection must be filed within 90 days of the date shown on the notice of assessment or reassessment. Miss that window and the only route back in is a formal request for an extension of time — and even that has a hard outer limit of one year and 90 days from the date on the notice, after which no objection can be filed at all.
Source: Government of Alberta — Corporate Income Tax Information Circular CT-8R4: Objections and Appeals.
Put those two facts together and the risk is concrete: a reassessment posts to TRACS on a Tuesday in October, nobody checks the portal that week, and by the time someone notices — during year-end review, say, or when a bookkeeper happens to log in for an unrelated reason — a meaningful chunk of the 90-day window is already gone. Before April 1, the same notice would have shown up in the mailbox and been physically visible. Now, if TRACS isn't part of someone's routine, it can sit unread indefinitely.
If you'd rather stay on paper
Corporations can still request paper delivery of notices of assessment and reassessment specifically (not statements of account, which are online-only for everyone now). That election is not permanent: a paper mail request is valid for two years from the date it is submitted, and must be renewed within the 60-day window before it expires or delivery reverts automatically to online mail. A corporation that requested paper mail in April 2026 and forgets to renew before roughly February 2028 will find itself back on digital-only delivery without any further notice that the switch happened.
Source: Alberta.ca — TRACS online mail transition.
A practical checklist for Alberta corporations
- Confirm who, if anyone, is enrolled in TRACS for your corporation — you personally, a director, or your accounting firm as a third-party organization. If the answer is nobody, your notices and account information may already be posting to a portal no one is watching.
- If your bookkeeper or accountant normally handles CRA and TRA matters, confirm their TPO access specifically covers TRACS, not just CRA's Represent a Client — the two systems are separate, and TPO access has to be set up in TRACS on its own.
- Set a recurring reminder to check TRACS, not just at year-end. Given the 90-day objection clock starts on the posting date regardless of when it's read, a monthly or bi-monthly login habit is the difference between catching an issue in week one and discovering it in week eleven.
- If you filed a paper mail request, note the renewal date — two years from the request date, with a 60-day window to renew before it lapses back to online-only.
- Don't assume "no mail this month" means nothing happened. Statements of account stopped arriving by mail for every corporation on April 1, 2026, whether or not a paper mail election is in place.
Where this fits into your broader compliance picture
This is an administrative shift, not a change to what you owe or when your return is due — but it changes how you would find out if TRA disagrees with what you filed. Combined with the CRA's own move toward sign-in-gated services earlier this summer, the pattern for Alberta business owners is consistent: both the federal and provincial tax authorities are moving core correspondence behind portals that require someone to actively check them. A compliance routine built around "I'll deal with it when the letter arrives" no longer works at either level.
Key takeaways
- As of April 1, 2026, TRA delivers most Alberta corporate income tax correspondence — notices of assessment, reassessment, and statements of account — through TRACS by default rather than by paper mail.
- Statements of account stopped being mailed to any corporation, even those with an active paper mail election for notices of assessment and reassessment.
- A notice posted in TRACS is considered received on its posting date, which starts the 90-day objection deadline — regardless of whether anyone has actually opened it. The absolute outer limit to file, with an extension request, is one year and 90 days from the notice date.
- A paper mail election for notices of assessment and reassessment is valid for two years and must be renewed within a 60-day window before expiry, or delivery reverts to online mail automatically.
- Make sure someone — you, a director, or your accounting firm as a registered third-party organization — is actually logging into TRACS on a regular schedule, not just enrolled in it.
If your corporation needs its TRACS enrolment or third-party access reviewed, or you want a compliance calendar that accounts for both CRA's and TRA's move to portal-based notices, RN Canada works with Alberta owner-managed businesses on exactly this kind of practical tax administration.