The T2202 (Tuition and Enrolment Certificate) is a tax slip your school issues each year confirming how much you paid in eligible tuition fees and how many months you were enrolled. You use it to claim the tuition tax credit on your federal return, which reduces the income tax you owe. Most provinces offer a matching provincial credit too.

The T2202 replaced the older T2202A form starting with the 2019 tax year. If you have slips from before 2019, they’ll say T2202A. Same thing, older name.

Who Gets One

Your school issues a T2202 automatically if you paid more than $100 in eligible tuition fees to that institution in the calendar year. The $100 minimum applies per institution. You can’t combine amounts from multiple schools to hit the threshold.

What Counts as Eligible Tuition

Eligible:

  • Tuition fees
  • Lab fees
  • Mandatory computer service fees
  • Library or laboratory facility charges
  • Examination fees for licensing or certification purposes
  • Application fees, if you subsequently enrolled
  • Charges for a certificate, diploma, or degree

Not eligible:

  • Parking
  • Meal plans and residence fees
  • Student association fees
  • Textbooks (the federal textbook credit was eliminated after 2016)
  • Athletic fees
  • Any fees reimbursed by your employer, a government job training program, or a federal athlete assistance program

Tuition paid with scholarship, RESP, OSAP, or student grant money is still eligible. Being reimbursed by a third party is the only thing that disqualifies a fee.

Calendar Year vs. Academic Year

Your T2202 is based on when your courses took place, not when you paid for them. Your 2025 T2202 covers courses that ran between January 1 and December 31, 2025. Tuition paid in December 2025 for a course starting January 2026 shows up on your 2026 T2202, not your 2025 one. If a course spans two calendar years, the eligible amount is split based on how many hours fell in each year.

This trips up a lot of students. If your fall semester tuition payment hits in August, it still goes on your current year’s T2202. Not next year’s.

Your school makes the T2202 available by the last business day of February each year, for the previous calendar year. Most schools post it to your student portal. Keep it for at least six years. The CRA may ask for documentation. If you lose it, contact your school. The CRA cannot issue replacements.

How the Credit Works

The tuition tax credit is non-refundable. It reduces your tax owing down to zero, but it won’t generate a refund on its own.

Federal credit: Multiply your eligible tuition by 15%. On $6,000 in tuition, that’s a $900 federal tax credit. You claim it on Line 32300 of your T1 return, calculated through Schedule 11. Your tax software handles this automatically when you enter your T2202 amounts. For a walkthrough of filing your taxes as a student, see Issue 7 of the newsletter.

Provincial credit: Most provinces calculate a matching credit when you file. Rates vary by province. Ontario, BC, and Alberta have eliminated their provincial tuition credit for current-year amounts, though unused credits from prior years may still be claimable.

Quebec uses a separate Relevé 8 (RL-8) slip instead of the T2202.

If You Don’t Owe Much Tax Yet

Most students don’t earn enough to use their full tuition credit in the year they take the courses. You have two options for unused amounts.

Transfer up to $5,000 to a family member. You can transfer the current year’s unused federal tuition amount (up to $5,000) to a spouse, common-law partner, parent, or grandparent. You must first use enough of the credit to reduce your own tax to zero. Only the current year’s amount can be transferred. Carried-forward amounts cannot. The recipient claims it on their return using Schedule 2.

Carry forward the rest indefinitely. Any amount you don’t use and don’t transfer rolls forward with no expiry date. You can claim it in any future year when you have income tax owing. The catch: you must file a tax return every year between now and when you plan to use it, or the carry-forward is lost. This works similarly to how you can defer FHSA deductions to a higher-income year.

How to Claim It

  1. Download your T2202 from your school’s student portal (available by end of February)
  2. Make sure your SIN is on file with your school. Institutions are required to include it on the T2202, and a missing SIN can result in a $100 penalty
  3. Enter the amounts on Schedule 11. Tax software like Wealthsimple Tax or TurboTax does this automatically
  4. Decide what to do with any unused credits: use them yourself, transfer to a family member, or carry forward
  5. File your return. You don’t submit the T2202 itself, but keep it on file in case the CRA requests it

If you attended more than one school, you’ll receive a separate T2202 from each. Enter each one separately on Schedule 11.

Common Mistakes

Mixing up calendar year and academic year. Your September tuition goes on that same year’s T2202, not the following year’s.

Adding T2202s together before entering them. Report each slip separately. Don’t combine the totals yourself.

Skipping a filing year during carry-forward. File every year between when you earned the credit and when you plan to use it, even if you have zero income. One skipped year and the carry-forward is gone.

Assuming reimbursed tuition is claimable. If an employer paid your tuition and didn’t include it in your taxable income, you can’t claim the credit on those fees.

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