Why Your Wealthsimple T5008 May Not Reflect Your True ACB

What the Wealthsimple T5008 does and does not tell you

If you sold securities in a non-registered Wealthsimple account, you may receive a T5008 for those dispositions. That slip is useful, but it is not your final capital-gains calculation. The CRA states that Box 20 may or may not reflect your adjusted cost base.

Wealthsimple is unusually confident about its slip. Its help pages say the Box 20 ACB "will be, to the best of our available information, accurate." Read the caveats that follow, though. Wealthsimple itself notes that assets transferred in from another institution may not carry an accurate ACB, and states plainly that it does not adjust for superficial losses, since most institutions consider that impractical to automate. Add what no single broker can see, meaning your holdings of the same security elsewhere and cross-account repurchases, and CRA's warning that Box 20 may or may not reflect your ACB still applies in full.

The slip also does not tell you whether the sale is a capital gain or business income. CRA leaves that determination to you, and it changes both the tax rate and which rules apply. See is a T5008 capital gains or investment income.

• It is a broker-issued transaction slip, not a full pooled-ACB calculation.
• It does not replace your need to track repeat buys and sells over time.
• It does not relieve you from making any ACB adjustments required by Canadian tax law.

Why the Wealthsimple activity CSV is the better source file

The Wealthsimple activity CSV contains the chronological transaction history the engine actually needs: trades, dates, quantities, cash amounts, dividends, interest, and corporate-action rows. That lets ActiveACB rebuild the tax result from the raw events instead of trusting a year-end summary slip.

• ACB pooling: built from your trading history, not from a slip snapshot
• Superficial loss: applied automatically across uploaded brokers, with denied amounts added to the replacement shares' ACB
• FX treatment: Bank of Canada per-leg daily rates, cost at the buy-date rate and proceeds at the sell-date rate
• Corporate actions: splits and consolidations reflected from the exported activity rows
• Return of capital: Wealthsimple ROC rows are applied as cost-base adjustments, not income
• Options events: expiries, exercises, and assignments appear in the export as their own rows

How to export the right file from Wealthsimple

The full screenshot guide is at activeacb.ca/guide-wealthsimple. Wealthsimple redesigns often, so this is the flow as of August 2026. Run your own broker export through the ACB calculator. Your first calculation is free.

1. Open Activity. Sign in to Wealthsimple and open the Activity screen.
2. Download activities. Choose a custom date range covering your full history.
3. Select All accounts. Download the CSV that includes all account activity.
4. Upload to ActiveACB. The engine excludes registered-account rows automatically and calculates the taxable non-registered result.

Wealthsimple T5008 vs activity CSV: coverage table

Frequently asked questions

Does Wealthsimple issue a T5008 at all?

Yes, for eligible non-registered securities dispositions. But the presence of a T5008 does not mean the Box 20 figure is your final CRA adjusted cost base.

If Wealthsimple Tax imports my T5008, can I just trust it?

No. Wealthsimple Tax still expects you to enter the correct adjusted cost base when you report a T5008, and the software is only as accurate as the ACB figure you provide. It does summarize imported slips into the capital gains section to avoid double reporting, so never enter the same sales manually on top of an import.

I only used Wealthsimple this year. Do I still need the CSV?

Yes. The CSV is the better source because it contains the raw transaction history needed to verify the T5008 and rebuild the ACB under CRA rules.

I also traded at Questrade or IBKR. What should I upload?

Upload all of them in the same session (multi-file uploads require season access): Wealthsimple CSV, Questrade Activity Report XLSX, and IBKR Flex Query XML as applicable. That is the only way to catch cross-broker ACB and superficial-loss issues.

Does my Wealthsimple crypto activity show up on the T5008?

Generally no. Wealthsimple treats crypto as a commodity, and crypto dispositions are not covered by the securities T5008. You are responsible for tracking and reporting crypto gains separately.

What if the T5008 and ActiveACB totals match?

Then your history may be simple. Recalculating confirms it, and the built-in T5008 checker compares your typed slip totals to the engine figures and explains any difference in pooled cost, FX conversion, or loss treatment.