Members have brought to my attention an issue with using Change My Return (CMR) to transfer the disability tax credit (DTC) from one spouse to the other. This error is common for spouses/common law partners of first-time DTC claimants but would likely be relevant in other contexts (e.g., transfers from child to parent).
Members would get an error message stating that the CRA cannot allow the transferee spouse to claim the DTC transferred from the spouse/common-law partner because they "did not receive a T2201 Disability Tax Credit Certificate" for the transferring spouse. This error message is being received after the transferring spouse had been approved by the CRA to claim the DTC.
We reached out to the CRA for advice on how to avoid this issue and received the following response:
"If the claiming spouse does not have a Disability Tax Credit (DTC) update on their profile, the CMR system will not allow the transfer. This is likely to be the case in any first-time DTC claim where the spouse was not indicated as a potential claimant in section 2 of the original DTC application (Form T2201).
The mitigation for this in the future would be to encourage applicants to include their spouse in section 2 of the T2201 when it is submitted. This will result in the proper update on the spouse's account (typically for the same years of eligibility as the Person with Disability (PWD), so long as they've been married the entire time) and will not impact any reassessments requested on the application as those can only be completed for the PWD (or the parent/guardian of a minor). Once that update is on file, the adjustment requests can be made through CMR.
Alternatively, if you notice that there is no DTC update showing for the spouse on My Account/RAC, a T1-Adjustment webform to CRA would get redirected to our DTC units for the appropriate action when the adjustments team sees that the update is not on file."
đź”— The website for the T1-Adjustment webform is as follows:
Before you begin
Originally posted on LinkedIn on May 7, 2025
------------------------------
Ryan Minor
Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada
------------------------------