What you need to know about new T4 boxes for 2020

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has added four new boxes to the T4 for reporting the employment income and retroactive payments necessary to validate payments for support programs like the CEWS, CERB and CESB. So if, for example, your employees claimed EI or CERB, and have also been paid on your payroll throughout the pandemic, these figures need to be added to the T4 to validate those payments. These reporting requirements apply to all employers, not just those who use CEWS or had employees with EI or CERB claims.

Payworks has made this easy for our clients, as our Payroll solution will automatically populate these accumulated wages over select time frames. Here’s how to check it out:

• Head to Payroll > Year End > Year-End Management > Employee Year-to-date.
• Choose an employee.
• Select the Other tab.
• The left-hand side of the table displays T4 amounts for each period required to report on.
• If the figure isn’t what you think it should be and you’d like to change it, you can either:
  • a. Enter an amount into the Dollars Adj. field, which will automatically adjust the New YTD Dollars field, or:
  • b. Change the total New YTD Dollars field, which will automatically adjust the difference in the Dollars Adj field.
• Click the Save button.

If you’re a new Payworks client (since March 15, 2020 this year) and these fields aren’t completed, you’ll need to fill them in prior to your year-end processing. You can manually enter those amounts, similar to the above process for making changes:

• Head to Payroll > Year End > Year-End Management > Employee Year-to-date.
• Choose an employee.
• Select the Other tab.
• The left-hand side of the table displays T4 codes for each period required to report on.
• Add amounts for each employee in one of two ways:
  • a. Enter an amount into the Dollars Adj. field, which will automatically adjust the New YTD Dollars field, or:
  • b. Change the total New YTD Dollars field, which will automatically adjust the difference in the Dollars Adj field.
• NOTE: If you do not see those codes in the table, simply add them using the Desc field and enter an amount.
• Click the Save button.

If you have a large number of employees and adjusting these figures seems completely daunting, don’t worry; you can use the employee imports function to easily manage this by quickly uploading a worksheet that contains all the relevant figures. Here’s how:

• Head to Payroll > Employee Setup > Employee Imports.
• In the Filter Imports dropdown, select Year to Date Imports.
• In the Select Import Type dropdown, Select YTD Other import.
• Download the import template and fill in the appropriate information.
• Click Choose File to upload the worksheet that contains your employees’ wages.
• Click Generate Preview; the information uploaded displays below; verify it’s correct.
• Click the Save button; File Successfully Imported displays at the top of the screen.

This year-end will be quite different than previous years, but what hasn’t changed is our commitment to our clients. If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us any time. We’re here for you every step of the way.