The Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) online portal is a valuable tax resource—the last thing you want is to try to access it only to find out it’s offline. But, like every website, the CRA’s site shuts down for both regular and scheduled maintenance. Knowing when the CRA shutdown takes place is important—and not just because you can’t log into the portal. During those periods, some of the functionalities of tax programs like TurboTax won’t work, since they require active communication with the CRA website.
In this article, we’ll help clarify why CRA shutdowns happen, how to find out when CRA maintenance will take place, and what functionalities won’t be available during these
periods. That way, the next time you encounter a problem, you’ll know why and won’t need to frantically Google “Why is the CRA website down?” Instead, just read on.
- The CRA shuts down daily for regular maintenance between 3:00 AM and 6:00 AM EST.
- The CRA also has scheduled maintenance periods that can last as long as a few days.
- When the CRA’s website is undergoing maintenance, certain TurboTax functionalities that require communication with the CRA site won’t work.
CRA hours of service
Unless you’ve tried to log in between 3:00 AM and 6:00 AM EST to submit your taxes, you might be surprised to learn that the CRA shuts down all its online services for those three hours every day to complete maintenance.
Aside from these regular hours-of-service outages, the CRA also has longer periods of scheduled maintenance that take place as needed. During these shutdowns, which generally occur overnight but can extend to a few days, either some or all of the CRA’s services can be affected.
For example, in October 2023, the CRA had a service interruption affecting all its applications that took place from 11:00 PM EST on October 13, 2023, until 6:00 AM EST on October 16, 2023.
Not only will you not be able to log into the CRA portal during these periods, but you also won’t be able to use tax software like TurboTax to access NETFILE, the CRA’s online tax-filing service. That’s because the program needs to submit your tax information to the CRA’s website.
Why does the CRA shut down?
While the CRA has never publicly addressed why it needs to shut down its online services for both daily and scheduled maintenance, it’s pretty normal for websites to go offline to perform routine checks.
Most websites you visit daily require regular upkeep. Common forms of website maintenance include things like patching, software updates, security updates, database maintenance, server updates, and more. The good news is that all this updating protects you.
They’re usually performed to ensure the security and availability of the website during business hours, by optimizing the site to protect against outages or cybersecurity attacks. That translates into your financial information being better protected and not having to wait forever for pages to load when it really matters.
When and how often is the CRA website under maintenance?
There are two kinds of CRA maintenance: daily maintenance and scheduled maintenance.
The CRA’s daily maintenance occurs every day between 3:00 AM and 6:00 AM EST. During the daily maintenance period, there is a complete outage of all CRA services.
The CRA’s scheduled maintenance, meanwhile, occurs at irregular intervals. When the CRA has more time-consuming updates to perform, it will schedule a longer period of time during which to complete them.
But don’t worry. You don’t have to guess when these dates take place. The CRA lists its scheduled maintenance periods in advance, on its Service Maintenance Details webpage. You’ll also see the applications that will be disrupted by that particular update and when the interruption in services will start and end.
What does CRA maintenance mean for TurboTax users?
TurboTax is a separate application—accessed independently from the CRA website— that helps individuals and businesses calculate and file their taxes. When the CRA’s website is down for either daily or scheduled maintenance, the majority of TurboTax services will still work. For example, you can still input your tax information and calculate how much you’ll owe.
However, there are certain TurboTax functionalities that work only when they’re able to access the CRA’s website. These include things such as accessing tax slips directly from the CRA’s site and filing taxes electronically. These services won’t work during a CRA shutdown, because TurboTax’s software is unable to access or send any information to the CRA’s site during that time.
What can you continue to use the CRA website for?
You might be wondering whether everything on the CRA’s website is unavailable when the website is undergoing daily or scheduled maintenance.
During daily maintenance, you can’t access any of the website’s portals that provide you with your online account information. But the website’s informational pages are still live. That means that your CRA My Account will be down, but if you want to learn more about what a T4 is (after 3:00 AM EST), you still can. On the other hand, if you want to file your taxes during that time, you’ll be out of luck.
During the CRA’s scheduled maintenance, however, what’s still available on the website could vary considerably, depending on where the maintenance is taking place. While the CRA can perform maintenance that takes the entire website and all its functionalities offline, it can also perform maintenance that impacts only certain parts of the site. For example, the CRA could perform maintenance on My Business Account (its corporate tax portal), but CRA My Account (its individual tax portal) might still be online.
The best place to find out what will be affected during a CRA maintenance shutdown is on the CRA’s Service Maintenance Details page.
How should you prepare for CRA website maintenance?
Before scheduling time to work on your taxes, check the CRA’s Service Maintenance Details page in advance to ensure there aren’t any upcoming service shutdowns. You don’t want to get all your documents in order only to find out that you’ll need to wait to finalize your taxes!
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