The Canada Revenue Agency has spent the past two years quietly closing off the paper-based side of how businesses interact with it. Two of those changes are now fully in effect, and a third makes the remaining electronic option easier to use. None of this is provincial — it applies the same way whether your business is registered in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, or anywhere else in Canada, because these are CRA administrative rules, not provincial ones. If your business, or your bookkeeper, still leans on a drop box or a mailed paper return out of habit, this is the summer to change that.
CRA drop boxes closed for good on May 29, 2026
The CRA permanently closed all 45 of its drop boxes across Canada on May 29, 2026, following that year's tax filing season. These were the boxes at CRA tax centres and offices that let taxpayers and businesses leave paper returns, forms, and correspondence without mailing them or attending a service counter. The agency's own reasoning is a straightforward usage decline: drop box volume fell 78% between 2018–2019 and 2024–2025, from nearly 2 million items to just over 430,000, and items left in a drop box still had to be physically transported to the correct processing centre before anything could happen with them — slower than mailing or filing online in practice, not faster.
Source: Canada Revenue Agency — CRA drop boxes to permanently close after 2026 tax filing season.
With drop boxes gone, anything a business used to leave in one now has two remaining paths: mail it to the appropriate tax centre, or move it online. For payments specifically, the CRA points businesses to online banking bill payment, the CRA's own My Payment service, pre-authorized debit, credit card or Interac e-Transfer through a third-party CRA-approved provider, or in-person payment at a Canada Post outlet — but no longer a drop box at a CRA location.
GST/HST paper returns have carried a real penalty since 2024
Separately, and for longer, the CRA has required most GST/HST registrants to file electronically. The mandatory electronic filing threshold of $1,500,000 in taxable supplies was removed for reporting periods beginning on or after January 1, 2024, meaning virtually all GST/HST registrants — not just larger businesses — must now file online. The only standing exceptions are charities and selected listed financial institutions (SLFIs); anyone else who genuinely cannot file electronically has to request a case-by-case exemption from the CRA in writing rather than simply defaulting to paper.
The CRA gave registrants a short grace period — penalties were waived for reporting periods beginning on or after January 1, 2024 and before April 1, 2024 for monthly and quarterly filers who had not previously been required to file electronically. That grace period ended more than two years ago. Since then, a business that continues to file GST/HST returns by paper without an approved exemption faces a flat penalty of $100 for the first return filed on paper and $250 for each subsequent one — and that penalty applies even to a nil return or a return that results in a refund, not just a return with tax owing.
For most currently operating businesses this is not new information, but it is worth a direct check if a bookkeeper or accountant has been filing on autopilot for a while: confirm the actual filing method being used is NETFILE, Internet File Transfer, or CRA My Business Account, and not a paper GST34 form mailed in out of long habit.
One thing did get easier: your GST/HST access code is now online
Not every change tightens things. As of October 20, 2025, businesses can view their GST/HST access code directly in CRA My Business Account, instead of having to track down a mailed access code letter or call the CRA to have one reissued. The access code is the four-digit security key some electronic filing methods — NETFILE, Internet File Transfer, and TELEFILE — require when you are filing outside a fully signed-in CRA session, and it stays the same from period to period unless you change it. Being able to look it up online removes one of the more common practical snags that used to slow down electronic GST/HST filing for smaller businesses without a dedicated bookkeeper.
Source: Canada Revenue Agency — Businesses tax information newsletter, Edition 2025-05, October 21, 2025.
A practical checklist for the rest of 2026
- Confirm your GST/HST returns are actually being filed electronically, not on a legacy paper GST34, and that whoever files them is not one of the narrow exempt categories (charity, SLFI, or an approved case-by-case exemption) without realizing it.
- If a paper return has gone out recently, check for a penalty notice. The $100/$250 penalty applies automatically once a registrant is required to file electronically, whether or not tax is owing on the return.
- Stop routing anything to a CRA drop box. They no longer exist as of May 29, 2026; mail or an electronic channel are the only options now.
- Set up (or confirm) electronic payment methods — online banking bill payment, CRA My Payment, or pre-authorized debit — for anything that used to go into a drop box alongside a paper form.
- If your business or bookkeeper has struggled with a lost or forgotten GST/HST access code in the past, check CRA My Business Account first; it may already be sitting there since October 2025.
Why this matters beyond the individual changes
Each of these three items is a small administrative detail on its own. Together, they describe a CRA that has moved past encouraging electronic filing and toward treating it as the default channel, with paper as a narrowing exception rather than an equal option. That shift affects a business the same way regardless of which province it operates in — a GST/HST registrant in Calgary, Vancouver, or Toronto faces the identical electronic filing requirement and the identical drop-box closure, because both are set at the federal level. The practical risk for owner-managed businesses is not any one of these changes individually; it is the accumulation of small process habits — a paper form here, a drop-box trip there — that quietly stop working while nobody notices until a penalty notice or a missed payment shows up.
Key takeaways
- CRA drop boxes at all 45 locations permanently closed on May 29, 2026 — mail or electronic filing/payment are now the only options.
- GST/HST electronic filing has been mandatory for most registrants since reporting periods beginning January 1, 2024, with the $1,500,000 threshold removed; only charities, SLFIs, and approved case-by-case exemptions are exempt.
- A paper GST/HST return without an exemption now triggers a $100 penalty for the first occurrence and $250 for each one after that, even on a nil or refund return — the short 2024 grace period ended over two years ago.
- GST/HST access codes have been viewable directly in CRA My Business Account since October 20, 2025, removing a common friction point in electronic filing.
- None of this is province-specific — it applies identically to businesses in Alberta, BC, Ontario, and every other province, since it is CRA administration, not provincial tax policy.
If your business is still relying on paper habits with the CRA, or you are not sure whether your GST/HST filing method is fully compliant with the electronic filing requirement, RN Canada works with owner-managed businesses across Alberta, BC, and Ontario to review and modernize exactly this kind of routine CRA administration before it turns into an avoidable penalty.