The CRA has $1.8 billion in uncashed cheques and you might be owed cash without knowing it

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) wants to put money in your pocket, believe it or not. As of July 2026, the agency is holding onto 10,833,150 uncashed cheques worth a combined $1,878,270,000, and a fair number of them likely belong to people who have no idea they’re owed anything at all.

The cheques consist of tax refunds, credits, and benefit payments that were issued and then, for one reason or another, never made it into anyone’s bank account. Sometimes a cheque gets lost in the mail. Sometimes someone moves and forgets to update their address. Sometimes an old envelope just gets tossed in a drawer and forgotten entirely.

Do these cheques ever expire?

Luckily, they do not. Government of Canada cheques never expire, so even one issued a decade ago can still be cashed today at any bank in the country, no questions asked, no fees attached.

How do you check if you’re owed money?

If you’re looking for a personal cheque, like a tax refund or benefit payment, and it’s at least six months old, the CRA’s My Account or Represent a Client portal will show it to you directly. The “Uncashed cheques” section sits right on the Overview page, and checking only takes a couple of minutes.

Anything newer than six months, or tied to a business, payroll, GST/HST, a trust, or a COVID-era benefit, won’t be listed online. Those require a phone call to the CRA instead.

What happens once you find one?

Finding your name on the list is only the first step. To actually get paid, a form needs to be filled out, specifically form PWGSC 535, which gets downloaded directly from your account since it comes pre-filled with your personal payment details. The remaining fields need to be completed and the form has to be signed by hand, since digital or stamped signatures aren’t accepted. From there, it can be submitted online through “Submit documents” or mailed to the Sudbury tax centre. If more than one cheque is being claimed, a separate form should be sent for each one, or the process gets delayed.

Before any of that, it’s worth confirming your direct deposit info and mailing address are current in your account, since that determines how fast the money actually arrives. Direct deposit is the quickest route, while mailed cheques can take up to 10 additional business days. And if any government debt is owed elsewhere, it may get deducted automatically before the rest is paid out.

A few situations come with their own rules. If a cheque belonged to someone who has since died, it should go to whoever is handling their estate, or be mailed back to the CRA’s office in Matane, Quebec for reissue. If a business or estate tied to a cheque has since closed, that one requires a phone call too. And if a cheque was stolen, it should be reported to the CRA, though the agency asks that people wait at least 10 business days after the cheque was issued before calling, or five days if it’s a Canada Child Benefit payment.

Since 2020, Canadians have already tracked down and cashed 5,613,430 old cheques worth more than $2 billion combined. So if there’s an old CRA account gathering dust somewhere, it might be worth logging back in.

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