How to Report a T5008 on Schedule 3: Capital Gains in Canada

What the T5008 is and is not

The T5008 is an annual slip from your broker listing securities you sold. It is useful, but it is not a substitute for your own ACB calculation. Box 20 is the broker's cost or book value figure, and CRA's own instructions say it "may or may not reflect your adjusted cost base" and that "you are required to make the adjustments, as needed." Watch Box 13 too. It shows the currency of the slip, and reporting a US-dollar Box 21 as if it were Canadian dollars misstates your proceeds and invites a CRA matching letter.

Two boxes carry most of the confusion, and they have their own guide. Box 20 is the broker's cost figure and Box 21 is the proceeds, which CRA tells the filer to report without deducting expenses even though some brokers report a net figure. One sentence each is enough here: replace Box 20 with your own ACB, and check whether Box 21 already has the commission taken out before you claim that commission again as an outlay. The full treatment, with the CRA wording and the double-count trap, is in T5008 box 20 and box 21.

How to report a T5008 on Schedule 3, step by step

Schedule 3 is the CRA form for capital gains or losses. The 2025 version puts publicly traded shares, mutual fund units and other shares on line 4 of its property sections, and every property row has the same five columns: year acquired, proceeds of disposition, adjusted cost base, outlays and expenses, and the gain or loss, which the form defines as column 2 minus columns 3 and 4. Here is how the numbers on your slip map onto those columns, following CRA guide T4037 and the Schedule 3 form itself.

1. Confirm the slip belongs on Schedule 3. A sale in a non-registered account on capital account is reported on Schedule 3. Securities held in a TFSA, RRSP or other registered plan are outside the T5008 reporting requirement altogether. If you trade as a business the result is business income on line 13500 instead, and interest on bearer-form debt goes to line 12100. If you are not sure which side of that line you are on, start with capital gains or investment income.
2. Check Box 13 for the currency. If the slip is in US dollars, CRA's guide says to convert the proceeds at the exchange rate in effect at the time of the sale, the ACB at the rate in effect when you acquired the property, and the outlays at the rate in effect when you paid them. Do this before anything goes on the form. Schedule 3 only takes Canadian dollars.
3. Take proceeds from Box 21. Box 21 is the proceeds of disposition or settlement amount. CRA instructs the filer not to deduct any expenses from it, so on a correctly prepared slip it is the gross sale amount, and that is the figure for column 2.
4. Calculate your own ACB, not Box 20. Column 3 asks for the adjusted cost base. For identical shares or units bought over time, CRA's guide says you have to calculate the average cost of each property in the group at the time of each purchase. That average, adjusted for reinvested distributions, return of capital and the superficial loss rule, is your adjusted cost base. Box 20 is the broker's version of the same number, and CRA says it may or may not reflect your ACB, so treat it as a check on your figure rather than the figure.
5. Put the sale commission in outlays and expenses. Column 4 is for amounts you incurred to sell the property, and CRA's definition names commissions and brokers' fees first. Enter the commission once, here, and not also as a deduction from proceeds.
6. Work out the gain or loss. Column 5 is column 2 minus columns 3 and 4, and the form says to show a loss in brackets. Each row on the form is a number of securities and a name, so use one row per security with the year's totals rather than one row per trade.
7. Add the rows up. Total proceeds for every row on line 4 go on line 13199 and the total gain or loss on line 13200. If the form runs out of rows, its own instruction is to attach a separate sheet.
8. Follow the total to your return. Line 4 is added into line 11 with the other property sections. Part 4 then adds gains already shown on slips, on line 17400 for T5, T5013 and T4PS slips and line 17600 for T3 slips, and arrives at the total capital gains or losses on line 19700. For publicly traded shares and fund units, Part 5 applies the inclusion rate, one-half under section 38 of the Income Tax Act, to give line 19900. Schedule 3 keeps separate lines for a few special cases, such as certain partnership interests, that this page does not cover. If line 19900 is positive it goes on line 12700 of your return. If it is negative you have a net capital loss for the year, which CRA says you can apply against taxable capital gains in any of the three previous years or in any future year. A claim against a later year goes on line 25300 of that return, and a carryback to an earlier year is requested separately on Form T1A.

You do not attach the slip or your trade records to the return. CRA's guide says those documents are not needed as proof of a sale or purchase, and in the same breath says to keep them in case CRA asks to see them later.

T5008 box-by-box reference

The boxes below come from CRA's T5008 guide and the CRA T5008 slip instructions for individuals. Use the slip as a source document, then report the correct tax result on Schedule 3.

Box 15 type codes in full

Box 15 identifies the instrument, not the tax treatment. CRA's complete code table:

Some tax software writes UNIT rather than CRA's UNT. The guide is the authority. Two codes carry consequences worth knowing. A DOB slip can mean the amount belongs on line 12100 as investment income rather than on Schedule 3, and Box 21 is permitted to be negative only where the code is FUT or OPC.

Is a T5008 capital gains or investment income?

The slip does not say. CRA's own wording is that these transactions "may be on account of income or capital," and no box on the T5008 makes the call. The determination is yours.

For most retail investors selling shares, ETFs or mutual fund units in a non-registered account, the answer is capital, reported on Schedule 3. Trading on income account as a business puts the result on line 13500 instead, and interest on bearer-form debt goes to line 12100.

Which one applies is a question of fact about your conduct rather than a choice you make at filing time, and it changes more than the tax rate. We cover the factors CRA weighs, the section 39(4) election that locks in capital treatment permanently, and what each answer costs you, in the guide to capital gains or investment income.

What Schedule 3 actually asks for

Schedule 3 asks for proceeds of disposition and adjusted cost base for each property or grouped position. The CRA expects your ACB under ITA s. 47 pooling rules, not just the broker's book value. The difference matters most when you have multiple lots, superficial losses, cross-account positions, options, or USD holdings.

On the form itself, publicly traded shares and fund units go on line 4 of the property sections, with proceeds on line 13199 and the gain or loss on line 13200. Every property row carries the same five columns, and the form's own notes say to show losses in brackets and to attach a separate sheet if you need more rows. The Schedule 3 total flows through line 19700 and the inclusion rate to line 19900, and from there to line 12700 of your return, while capital gains already shown on slips go on line 17600 for a T3 and line 17400 for T5, T5013 and T4PS slips. The 2025 form also dropped the Period 1 and Period 2 split that appeared on the 2024 version, because the proposed inclusion-rate increase was cancelled in March 2025 and the rate remains 50 percent, and CRA separately directs filers to report crypto-asset dispositions where the form applies.

T5008 example for Schedule 3

Suppose your T5008 shows Box 14 as 0603, Box 15 as SHS, Box 16 as 100, Box 17 as ABC Corp, Box 20 as $2,900.00, and Box 21 as $4,200.00. The slip says you sold 100 shares for $4,200.00, but it does not prove that $2,900.00 is your ACB.

Your own records show 60 shares bought for $20.00 with a $9.99 commission and 40 shares bought for $32.00 with a $9.99 commission. The pooled ACB before the sale is $2,499.98. If the sale commission was $9.99, Schedule 3 uses $4,200.00 of proceeds on line 13199, $2,499.98 of ACB, $9.99 of outlays and expenses, and a capital gain of $1,690.03 for line 13200. In that example, copying Box 20 would understate the gain by $400.02.

Carried onto the form, the row and the totals look like this. Column 1 asks for the year acquired. CRA's guide gives no rule for which year to enter when a position was built over several years, and the column does not change the gain. Keep the lot records and use one consistent, documented approach, such as the year of the first purchase.

When there is no slip, and when one slip covers many trades

Your obligation is to report the disposition, not to report the slips you received. Those are different things, and the gap between them catches people.

Several categories of transaction are not reportable on a T5008 at all. Dispositions inside registered accounts, deemed dispositions, most dealer-to-dealer trades, units in a money market fund trading at a constant fixed price in Canadian dollars, and the expiry or exercise of an option, right or warrant all fall outside the reporting requirement. A missing slip is not evidence that nothing happened, and CRA's matching program works from proceeds.

CRA's capital gains guide is blunt about the obligation. It says that regardless of whether the sale results in a gain or a loss, you must file a return to report the transaction, and that if you sell units, shares or securities you were issued a tax slip for, you must report a capital gain or loss. The slip itself is due to you by the last day of February following the year of the sale under CRA's T5008 guide, and CRA says most third-party slip data is processed and available to Auto-fill My Return by mid-March. A slip that has not arrived by early March is worth chasing with the broker rather than waiting on, and a slip that never arrives does not change what you report.

The reverse also happens. A filer may report more than one transaction on a single slip where the securities are identical and the client is the same, in which case Box 14 often carries 1231 rather than a real settlement date. CRA also permits a customized trading summary to be given to you in place of the formal slip. Neither changes what Schedule 3 needs, which is the correct total proceeds, the correct pooled adjusted cost base, and your outlays.

The reconciliation problem

Your T5008 may show several separate disposals for a security you accumulated over time, and a broker that sends one slip per trade can send dozens. Schedule 3 needs one reconciled figure per security: total proceeds, the pooled ACB of the units sold, the outlays, and the net gain or loss. That means combining every purchase and every disposition across all of your non-registered accounts before you file, because CRA's guide recalculates the average cost across the whole group of identical properties at each purchase, and the group is defined by the taxpayer rather than the account. The paper form has room for a handful of rows and tells you to attach a separate sheet when you need more. Tax software does the same job with a schedule that lists each security and rolls the totals up to lines 13199 and 13200.

The Auto-fill double-counting trap

Tax software can import your T5008 slips through CRA's Auto-fill My Return, and you can also type your dispositions into the capital gains section by hand. Doing both reports every sale twice. The major packages warn about this explicitly, and Wealthsimple Tax summarizes imported slips into the capital gains section precisely to prevent it. Pick one path. Either work from the imported slips after correcting each Box 20 to your true ACB, or delete the imports and enter your reconciled totals yourself.

Two limits on the import are worth knowing before you rely on it. CRA says the service can only send up to 500 T5008 slips, and at 501 or more it returns an error and every slip has to be entered manually, so heavy traders end up on the manual path anyway. CRA also says you will be prompted to confirm that the amounts are accurate and can choose to report the income in total, in part, or not at all, which is the moment to swap Box 20 for your own ACB rather than accept the import as filed. A negative Box 21, which only futures and options slips can carry, is a further wrinkle, because Wealthsimple Tax's help centre says its T5008 section cannot take one and those trades go into the capital gains section directly.

T5008 vs T3 vs T5

A T5008 reports a sale, redemption, or other disposition of a security. A T3 reports trust income allocated to you while you held a trust or fund, such as capital gains, dividends, foreign income, and return of capital. A T5 reports investment income, mainly interest and dividends, paid to you during the year. One is about disposing, the other two are about holding.

The line assignments come from CRA's Chart 1 for slip amounts. On the T3, CRA says a positive Box 42 is subtracted from the ACB of the units and a negative Box 42 is added to it, and the amount is never reported as income.

You can receive all three in one year for the same holding, and that is usually what confuses people rather than any single slip. Selling an ETF you held through its distributions produces a T5008 for the sale and a T3 for the distributions. Interest accrued on an equity linked note is reported on a T5, and it is deliberately not part of the Box 21 proceeds on the T5008 covering the note's disposition, so adding it to your proceeds double-counts it.

The T3 matters for ACB because Box 42 can report return of capital. Return of capital usually reduces your ACB, so it can increase the gain when you later sell. See the ETF return of capital guide for the year-by-year adjustment mechanics.

How ActiveACB bridges the gap

ActiveACB takes your full broker export, applies pooled ACB rules, superficial loss adjustments, FX calculations, options linking, and corporate-action handling, then outputs the exact figures you need for each Schedule 3 line. It turns broker activity into tax-ready totals instead of leaving you to reconcile slip summaries by hand. Your results include a T5008 checker: type your slip's Box 21 and Box 20 totals and ActiveACB compares them to its Schedule 3 figures and explains any difference, entirely in your browser. IBKR uploads also get a Broker Reconciliation section comparing the broker's own realized P&L to the engine figure, on screen and in the PDF. Run your own broker export through the ACB calculator. Your first calculation is free.

Frequently asked questions

Is my T5008 capital gains or investment income?

For most retail investors selling shares, ETFs, or mutual fund units, it is capital gains on Schedule 3. It is investment income only in narrower cases such as certain debt transactions that CRA identifies separately, and it can be business income if the trading activity is on income account.

Where do I enter my T5008 on my tax return?

On Schedule 3, in the property section for publicly traded shares, mutual fund units and other shares, which is line 4 on the 2025 form. Box 21 goes in the proceeds column, your own ACB in the adjusted cost base column, the sale commission in outlays and expenses, and the totals on lines 13199 and 13200. The taxable half reaches line 12700 of your return through line 19900.

Is Box 21 my capital gain?

No. Box 21 is the proceeds, the gross amount the sale brought in before expenses. Your capital gain is Box 21 minus your adjusted cost base and your selling costs, and only one-half of that gain is taxable.

Do I have to report a T5008 if I only had losses?

Yes. CRA's capital gains guide says you must file a return to report the transaction whether it produced a gain or a loss. Reporting the loss is also what creates the net capital loss you can carry back three years or forward to any future year.

Do I attach my T5008 to my return?

No. CRA says you do not need to attach documents as proof of a sale or purchase of capital property, but you must keep them in case CRA asks to see them later. If you file on paper, Schedule 3 itself is attached; the slip is not.

When will I get my T5008?

Brokers must send it by the last day of February following the year of the sale. CRA says most slip data from third parties is processed and available to Auto-fill My Return by mid-March, and the T3 slips that carry return of capital often arrive later than the T5008.

What if I have more than 500 T5008 slips?

Auto-fill My Return cannot send them. CRA says the service sends up to 500 T5008 slips and returns an error at 501 or more, so every slip has to be entered manually, which in practice means reconciling your trades to one row per security and entering the totals.

What is T5008 Box 21?

Box 21 is the proceeds of disposition or settlement amount. It is the sale-side number you reconcile to Schedule 3 proceeds, before adjusting for foreign currency and before putting selling expenses in the outlays and expenses column.

What are T5008 boxes 20 and 21?

Box 20 is the broker's cost or book value figure, while Box 21 is proceeds. Schedule 3 needs your true ACB and proceeds in Canadian dollars, so Box 20 may need to be replaced by your own calculation. Box 21 raises a separate trap, because CRA instructs filers to report it gross of commission while some brokers report it net, and claiming the commission again as an outlay then deducts it twice. See T5008 Box 20 and Box 21 explained.

What is T5008 Box 15?

Box 15 is the type code of securities. It helps identify what was sold, such as shares, fund units, options, futures, or bonds, but it does not decide the tax result by itself.

What is the difference between a T5008 and a T3?

A T5008 reports a disposition. A T3 reports trust income and allocations while you held the investment. A T3 return of capital amount can change your ACB before a later T5008 sale is reported.

Do I enter each T5008 slip separately on Schedule 3?

Not necessarily. Many taxpayers group dispositions by security or broker report where that produces the correct total proceeds and ACB. What matters is that the figures reported on Schedule 3 are correct, not that they mirror the slip line-for-line.

My T5008 Box 20 is blank. What do I do?

You still need to report the disposition. A blank Box 20 means the broker did not provide a cost figure. You must calculate the ACB yourself from your trading history.

What if I have dispositions at multiple brokers?

You need all relevant broker data in one calculation (combining multiple files requires season access). For example, combine your IBKR export with the Questrade and Wealthsimple workflows described at IBKR Canada tax guide, Questrade T5008 guide, and Wealthsimple T5008 guide so the ACB is calculated across the full picture.

I imported my T5008s with Auto-fill and also entered my gains manually. Did I double my gains?

Very likely yes, and it is one of the most common Schedule 3 errors. Remove one of the two. Keep either the imported slips (with corrected cost figures) or your manual capital gains entries, never both for the same sales.

My T5008 is in US dollars. Do I report it as shown?

No. Check Box 13 for the currency. A USD slip must be converted to Canadian dollars, with cost at the purchase-date rate and proceeds at the sale-date rate, before anything goes on Schedule 3.

The numbers on my T5008 add up to the same as ActiveACB. Do I still need to recalculate?

If the totals match, your file may simply be straightforward. Recalculating confirms it, and the built-in T5008 checker lets you type your slip totals and see exactly where they match or differ, with each difference explained.