Canadian ETF tax statistics 2026
Most Canadian ETFs quietly hand part of your money back every year, and every dollar of it changes your adjusted cost base. Here is how often that happens, measured across 870 verified fund-year records.
The numbers
Each figure is computed from the ActiveACB ETF tax factor dataset, 236 funds and 870 fund-year records compiled from issuer tax documents. Sample sizes are stated with every number. Run your own broker export through the ACB calculator. Your first calculation is free.
- 74% of covered Canadian ETFs (166 of 224) reported return of capital for the 2025 tax year.
- 47% of funds covered for four or more years (84 of 178) reported return of capital in every year we cover. It is recurring, not a one-off.
- 45% of covered funds (100 of 224) paid a reinvested distribution in 2025, a taxable amount that never arrives as cash.
- The median nonzero return of capital in 2025 was under a cent per unit ($0.00871), but covered call funds run far higher. ZWC.TO reported between $0.48 and $0.74 per unit in every year since 2019.
- The largest single fund-year figure on record is $0.825 per unit (XCBU.TO, 2022).
Return of capital, year by year
Shares below cover years with at least 50 funds in the dataset. Earlier years are in the dataset too, but with only a handful of funds each, so a percentage would mislead.
| Tax year | Funds covered | Reported ROC | Median nonzero ROC per unit | Paid a reinvested distribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 189 | 61% | $0.01935 | 43% |
| 2023 | 223 | 65% | $0.01176 | 22% |
| 2024 | 218 | 78% | $0.014665 | 29% |
| 2025 | 224 | 74% | $0.00871 | 45% |
What these adjustments do to your taxes
Return of capital is not taxed when you receive it. It lowers your adjusted cost base instead, which raises the capital gain you report when you eventually sell. Hold 1,000 units of ZWC.TO through 2025 and the fund returned $590 of capital. Skip the adjustment and your ACB stays $590 too high, your eventual gain is understated by the same amount, and a reassessment can add the tax back with interest.
Reinvested distributions cut the other way. They raise your ACB, so missing them means reporting a larger gain than you owe and overpaying. With 45% of covered funds paying one in 2025, both directions are common enough that neither can be ignored.
Methodology
Every figure on this page is computed from the ActiveACB ETF tax factor dataset, which records verified return of capital and reinvested distribution amounts per fund per tax year, with each row linked to the issuer document it came from. Browse the full table at the Canadian ETF tax factor lookup or download it as CSV.
Coverage is 236 funds weighted toward the largest Canadian issuers. Percentages describe covered funds, not the entire Canadian ETF universe. This page is refreshed each year once issuers publish final tax factors. The address stays the same, the title year moves.
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