Frequently Asked Questions

You can, but the numbers might be wrong. The CRA’s own T5008 states that Box 20 “may or may not reflect your adjusted cost base.” For a few buy-and-hold trades, it’s usually fine. But if you’ve traded the same stock multiple times, held foreign currency, or dealt with options or corporate actions, your broker’s reported cost base drifts further from reality with every transaction. You’re either overpaying or creating a liability you don’t know about. For a full walkthrough of how the T5008 maps to what the CRA asks for, see T5008 and Schedule 3.

More than most traders realize. Sell a stock at a loss and rebuy within 30 days? Loss denied, added back to your ACB. Sell shares at a loss then buy a call on the same underlying? ITA s. 54 can treat that call as identical property and deny the loss. Most traders don’t know that rule exists until they get reassessed.

Every USD conversion is a taxable FX event. Options assignments change the ACB of the shares you receive. Splits, spinoffs, and mergers reset your cost base. Each adjustment compounds on the next. Miss one early in the year and every calculation after it is wrong.

You could build a spreadsheet. But superficial loss detection means scanning a 61-day window around every sale. FX tracking means maintaining running pool ACBs for every foreign currency. Options linking means knowing the four-way CRA matrix for premiums. Most spreadsheets break down around trade 50. ActiveACB parses your broker export directly. Upload one file, get your complete report in seconds. No manual entry, no missed trades.

The comparison with AdjustedCostBase.ca, MyACB and Sharesight goes feature by feature. The short version is how much is done for you. ActiveACB reads seven brokers’ exports directly, offers a column mapper for other trade-history CSV or XLSX files, and calculates supported superficial loss, foreign exchange and ETF adjustments using the accounts and data you supply.

A corporation, yes. A trust, not yet. Choose Corporation as the account holder and the month its fiscal year ends, and the report covers that fiscal year in T2 terms, with capital gains on Schedule 6 and the net capital loss carryforward on Schedule 4. A corporation gets no $200 foreign-exchange exemption under s. 39(1.1). When it sells at a loss and buys identical shares within 30 days before or after the sale, and still holds them 30 days after it, the loss is suspended under s. 40(3.4) instead of being added to their cost, and it is released as a capital loss once the corporation has held none of them for 30 days. The stop-loss rule in s. 112(3), which reduces a corporation's loss on shares by certain dividends it received on them, is estimated for review but not taken off the figures. It also gives the fiscal year's change in the capital dividend account from capital gains and losses, to add to the balance in the corporation's records, and the aggregate investment income found in the uploaded accounts. Only the accounts you upload are checked for repurchases. Upload the owner's or a sister company's accounts with the corporation's and list them as an affiliated person's accounts, and their purchases count too, as do the shares a spinoff, stock dividend or merger gives them. A trust is subject to its own holder-specific rules, so for a trust treat the report as a starting point for its accountant, not a filing figure.

Superficial loss detection with the full CRA three-limiter formula, including cross-account TFSA/RRSP affiliated denial, call options as identical property, and year-end December-to-January look-forward. FX cash pool ACB tracking with the $200 annual net gain or loss exemption for individuals. Options exercise and assignment linking for calls and puts. Corporate actions: splits, mergers, return of capital, name changes, fractional share cash-in-lieu, and standard cost-base spinoffs (taxable spinoffs are flagged for review). Worthless security elections with reversal detection. T1135 foreign property warnings. The project has over 13,000 automated test cases, including CRA edge cases. These are not approximations.

Yes, and that’s the recommended workflow. ActiveACB calculates your correct ACB and capital gains. You take those numbers and enter them into Wealthsimple Tax (free), TurboTax, or give them to your accountant. Calculate with us, file with your preferred tool.

Interactive Brokers (Flex Query XML), Questrade (Activity Report XLSX), Wealthsimple (Activity Export CSV), CIBC Investor’s Edge (Transaction History CSV), TD Direct Investing (activity CSV), Qtrade Direct Investing (account history XLSX), and National Bank Direct Brokerage (activity history CSV). All seven are parsed directly for trades, dividends and distributions, and the other six also read interest, corporate actions and FX where they apply. The National Bank parser does not yet read interest, withholding, currency conversions, corporate actions or options, as its guide lists. With season access you can upload multiple files from different accounts or brokers in a single session. The engine merges everything and detects cross-account superficial losses automatically. Step-by-step guides walk you through the export, with the IBKR Flex Query guide, Questrade Activity Report guide, Wealthsimple activity CSV guide, CIBC Investor’s Edge guide, TD Direct Investing guide, Qtrade guide, and National Bank Direct Brokerage guide. Broker-specific T5008 explainers are at IBKR, Questrade, Wealthsimple, CIBC, TD, Qtrade, and National Bank.

Any other broker (RBC, BMO, Scotia iTRADE, or Disnat) works through the column mapper. Upload the trade-history CSV or XLSX, match its columns once, and the engine runs the same calculation. For Scotia iTRADE the mapper recognizes the Transactions tab CSV and fills in its columns, as the Scotia iTRADE guide shows, and the Scotia iTRADE T5008 explainer covers its slips. Map the Amount column too and dividend, withholding, interest, and FX conversion rows import alongside the trades, feeding the income summary and the foreign-currency gain calculation.

Options are recognized from a standard option symbol, with exercise, assignment, and expiry handled the way section 49 requires. Stock splits and ticker renames can be entered as their own rows, or handled by restating your history the way the template's Read Me sheet explains. Mergers for shares, split-offs, and spinoffs come through named-broker exports or the corporate-action builder after your first calculation. The starter template shows 45 worked example rows across four sheets, plus a Read Me that maps every event type to the right way to enter it.

Yes. After you map the columns, click Verify file. ActiveACB reads the staged CSV or XLSX on the server and shows the imported row counts, ignored rows, skipped row numbers, and high-risk option, split, or ticker rename rows. Confirm is still available without verification, and the same audit is saved with your result.

Your file is processed in a temporary directory and deleted the moment your report is generated. A copy of each file you add is kept privately for 7 days to improve broker support, then deleted. IBKR files are never kept, and you can turn this off on your profile page. We keep a layout profile of it, the column names and formats with none of your values, to troubleshoot failed uploads, plus a redacted sample of the first rows only if you choose to share one. If an upload fails you can press a button to send the file to support, and only then do we keep a copy, privately and for 30 days. Calculation results are stored in your account history and you can delete any calculation, or your whole account, at any time. There is no ad tracking.

Yes, with season access. Click “+ Add files” to upload files from any mix of supported brokers, ActiveACB exports, and column-mapped files. The engine processes all trades together, pools ACB correctly across accounts, and detects superficial losses across brokers, including cases where you sold in one account and rebought in another.

Any year from 2021 onwards, and for a corporation any fiscal year ending in 2015 or later. For the most accurate results, upload your full trading history from account inception. The engine processes all years chronologically to build correct pooled ACB, but only reports dispositions for your selected tax year.

Yes, two ways. The fastest is the inline trade editor: on your results page (or from any calculation in your history), fix, add, or delete rows and recalculate without re-uploading anything. For bulk edits, download the Raw Trades XLSX from your calculation history, correct rows in Excel, and re-upload it; ActiveACB recognises its own export format and processes it like any broker import.

With season access, every calculation gives you three downloads: an audit-grade PDF with Schedule 3 figures and per-disposition detail, an XLSX report with a per-disposition breakdown and raw trades, and a JSON file with the full calculation detail. All three are available from your calculation history page. The PDF is the format most useful for your accountant. The XLSX is useful for reconciling against your T5008 or spotting individual trades you want to correct.

Your first calculation is free with an account: sign up, upload, and see full results on screen. Paid access is a one-time payment covering the full filing season: Standard $34.99 for up to 2 accounts, Pro $69.99 for unlimited accounts and brokers, and an Accountant license at $199 per preparer with a client management dashboard, batch runs, ACB continuity ledger workpapers, and uncapped history. It unlocks unlimited calculations, PDF and XLSX downloads, and unlimited trade editing. It is not a recurring charge and does not renew. Details are on the pricing page.

Brokers typically convert realized P&L at a single FX rate and report book values that ignore superficial losses, cross-account pooling, and return of capital. The CRA requires cost converted at the buy-date rate and proceeds at the sell-date rate, pooled ACB across accounts, and denied superficial losses added to replacement ACB. ActiveACB shows you the difference: IBKR uploads get a Broker Reconciliation section comparing the broker's own P&L to the engine figure with each difference explained, and the T5008 checker lets you type your slip's Box 21 and Box 20 totals and see exactly why they differ, for any broker.

Cryptocurrency (no CRA cost accounting standard yet), trust accounts, and U.S. wash-sale rules (a different rule from Canadian superficial loss). ETF return-of-capital and reinvested distribution adjustments are applied automatically for over 200 Canadian ETFs using verified issuer data (tax years 2022 through 2025); each calculation shows the per-unit amounts and their issuer sources in a review panel you can edit. For funds without verified data, enter the per-unit amounts from the fund’s published tax factors in the same panel (explained in ETF return of capital and ACB).

Taxable spinoffs that require a deemed disposition are flagged for review rather than calculated automatically. Custom imports can read option, split, and ticker rename rows, but mergers for shares, split-offs, and spinoffs still need a named-broker export or the corporate-action builder after your first calculation. Short selling is tracked, but complex synthetic short positions that span multiple instruments may require manual review. A full methodology and known-limitation list is at activeacb.ca/methodology.

Yes. The Accountant tier is a per-preparer professional-use license that adds a multi-client practice dashboard, sequential batch runs, per-client workpaper bundles, white-label branding (your logo and firm name on client deliverables), transaction-level ACB continuity ledgers, and a methodology letter with every calculation. Client broker files are deleted immediately after processing and never retained. ActiveACB is calculation software, not tax advice: the preparer reviews every output and remains solely responsible for the engagement. Details are on the accountants page.