Why Your TD Direct Investing T5008 May Not Reflect Your True ACB

What the TD T5008 does and does not tell you

TD Direct Investing issues a T5008, and a Relevé 18 in Quebec, for securities you disposed of or redeemed in a non-registered account. The CRA says of every T5008 that Box 20 may or may not reflect your adjusted cost base, and that you make the adjustments. Nothing TD publishes says otherwise.

Alongside the slip TD provides two reports. The Trading Summary lists purchase and sale prices, dates and commissions. The Realized Gains and Losses report lists every security you disposed of with a book cost and a gain or loss. It looks like the finished answer. TD’s own tax documents page says it is not. “We cannot guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the book cost in the RGL report,” it reads, naming transfers from another institution and corporate actions as examples, and it adds that the report “should not be included when filing your tax returns.”

A book cost kept by one broker for one account cannot apply rules that reach beyond that account.

• Other accounts and other brokers. Identical securities pool across your non-registered accounts. TD sees one account at a time.
• Superficial losses. If you or an affiliated person acquires identical property, or a right to acquire it, within 30 days before or after a loss sale, all or part of the loss can be denied. The rule also requires that you or an affiliated person still owns, or has a right to acquire, replacement property 30 days after the sale. See the superficial loss rule. A denied amount can increase taxable replacement ACB. A registered-plan replacement can instead make the denial permanent.
• Transfers in. TD names these first among the reasons its book cost can be wrong.
• US-dollar trades. Cost converts at the rate on the purchase date and proceeds at the rate on the sale date. See USD trades and your ACB.
• Return of capital and reinvested distributions, which issuers confirm after year end.

The slip also does not say whether a sale is a capital gain or business income. That is your call. See is a T5008 capital gains or investment income.

Why the WebBroker Activity CSV is the better source file

The Activity CSV lists transactions, including purchases, within the exported date range, with their dates, quantities, prices, commissions, net amounts and currencies. It is the TD transaction export ActiveACB reads directly. The Gain/Loss export focuses on sales and income. Statements and Trading Summaries can help fill gaps in older history. ActiveACB rebuilds the result from the Activity rows.

• ACB pooling: one average cost per security across your uploaded non-registered accounts and brokers
• Superficial loss: the 61-day window is checked against the taxable trades you supply. Missing account history can change the result
• FX treatment: each US-dollar row converts at the Bank of Canada rate for its own settlement date
• Options: written and bought contracts are told apart by TD’s OPENING and CLOSING markers, and expiry and assignment rows are matched to their contract
• Assignments: the premium is folded into the shares bought or sold, dated to the share trade through TD’s AS OF date
• Income: dividends with their withholding, margin interest, and TD Investment Savings Account interest reinvested as units

These broker files are imported as non-registered accounts. Review registered-plan and affiliated-person purchases separately. They can affect a superficial loss even when they are absent from your uploaded history.

Written options spanning tax years. ActiveACB currently recognizes their premiums when the position closes. Review and adjust the affected returns for the write-year reporting and later-exercise rules explained in the options guide.

When the TD slips arrive

TD’s published dates for the 2025 tax year were as follows. Check TD’s current schedule for other tax years.

Year-end packages for the last eight tax years stay in WebBroker under Accounts, Documents (eServices), Tax Documents. The Trading Summary is produced for non-registered accounts only.

How to export the right file from TD Direct Investing

The full walk-through is in the TD export guide. Follow the four steps below to prepare your file for the ACB calculator. Your first calculation is free.

1. Open Activity. In WebBroker, click Accounts and open the Activity tab for your non-registered account.
2. Set the widest date range and note the earliest row it returns.
3. Export the CSV for each currency side of the account, and leave the files as downloaded.
4. Upload to ActiveACB. The files are recognized by their header and read directly.

TD T5008 vs Activity CSV: coverage table

Frequently asked questions

Does TD Direct Investing track my ACB?

TD keeps a book cost for each holding and shows it in WebBroker and on its Realized Gains and Losses report. TD says it cannot guarantee the accuracy or completeness of that book cost, and the CRA says Box 20 on a T5008 may or may not reflect your adjusted cost base. The figure is a record to check, not the number to file.

Can I rely on the Realized Gains and Losses report without checking it?

Check its figures against your records first. TD says not to include the RGL report with your tax return and separately warns that its book cost may be incomplete or inaccurate. That does not prevent you from using verified figures to prepare your return. Reconcile transfers, corporate actions and holdings at other brokers before relying on the totals.

My Activity export does not reach back to when I opened the account. What now?

TD does not publish how far the Activity screen reaches, and customers have reported windows as short as 60 days, while an export we received in September 2026 went back 13 months. Download it regularly so the files overlap. For older years, the Gain/Loss tab exports sales, dividends and interest, and the year-end packages under Documents (eServices) hold eight tax years of Trading Summaries. Use statements and trade confirmations to reconstruct all missing buys, sells and other ACB adjustments. Add missing trades through the trade editor and record the related cost-base changes.

I have a US-dollar side to my TD account. Do I upload it separately?

Yes. The Canadian-dollar and US-dollar sides are separate sub-accounts with separate Activity exports. Upload both in the same session. Each US-dollar row is converted at the Bank of Canada rate for its settlement date.

Does the T5008 cover my TFSA or RRSP at TD?

No. A T5008 reports dispositions in non-registered accounts, and TD’s Trading Summary is not produced for RRSP, TFSA, RRIF or RESP accounts. Leave registered account exports out of the calculator as well, since a TD file does not name its account.

What if the T5008 and ActiveACB totals match?

Matching totals are a useful cross-check, but do not prove that the history is complete or the ACB is correct. Check transfers, return of capital and missing transactions against your records. The built-in T5008 checker compares slip totals to the calculation and helps explain differences.