Form T5008: Statement of Securities Transactions and ACB Reporting

Form T5008, the Statement of Securities Transactions, is the slip your broker sends you and the Canada Revenue Agency each year to report the proceeds from securities you sold, redeemed, or exchanged. It does not calculate your capital gain or loss. That work is yours: you take the proceeds from the slip, calculate your own adjusted cost base, and report the resulting gain or loss on Schedule 3 of your tax return.¹ The slip covers stocks, bonds, mutual fund units, options, warrants, futures, precious metals, equity-linked notes, and debt obligations in bearer form.

You should receive your copies by the last day of February following the calendar year the transactions took place.² The date on the slip is the settlement date, not the trade date.

What Each Box on the T5008 Reports

Misreading the boxes is the most common mistake with this form, and two of them cause almost all the confusion.

Box 21 – Proceeds of disposition or settlement amount. The gross amount you received from the sale. Issuers do not deduct commissions or selling expenses here.²
Box 20 – Cost or book value. Intended to show the original cost including purchase commissions and adjusted for reinvested distributions and returns of capital. In practice this box is often blank or wrong, because your broker may not have your full purchase history, especially for securities transferred in from another institution.²
Box 15 – Type code of securities. A short code identifying what you sold: SHS for shares, MFT for mutual fund trust units, BON for bonds, OPC for option contracts, FUT for futures.³
Box 16 – Quantity of securities. The number of units.
Box 17 – Identification of securities. A written description, such as “shares of XYZ Corporation” or “Treasury bill.”³
Box 18 – ISIN/CUSIP number. The standardized identification number for the security.
Box 14 – Date. The settlement date. If the slip aggregates identical transactions across the year, this box shows December 31.²

The CRA states plainly that the amount in Box 20 “may or may not reflect your adjusted cost base” and that you are responsible for any needed adjustments.¹ Treat Box 20 as a starting point. Your own records determine the correct cost figure.

Calculating Your Adjusted Cost Base

The adjusted cost base (ACB) is the true cost of acquiring a security after accounting for purchase commissions, reinvested distributions, returns of capital, and corporate reorganizations. Getting this right is the single most important step, because every dollar of understated ACB becomes a dollar of overtaxed gain.

The Average Cost Method for Identical Securities

When you buy the same security at different prices over time, you cannot pick which shares you “sold.” The CRA requires an average cost method for identical properties. Each purchase resets the average: divide the total cost of all units held by the total number of units.⁴

Say you bought 100 shares of a company at $20 each, then another 100 at $30. Your total cost is $5,000 for 200 shares, so the average ACB per share is $25. Sell 50 shares and your ACB for that sale is $1,250, regardless of which lot you feel you sold. Brokerage commissions paid on each purchase get folded into total cost before averaging.

Reinvested Distributions and Return of Capital

Mutual fund holders face an extra wrinkle. When a fund reinvests distributions to buy you more units, those reinvested amounts increase your ACB. Ignore them and you pay tax twice: once on the distribution reported on your T3 or T5 slip, and again when you sell the units at an understated cost.

Return of capital works the other way. When a distribution is classified as return of capital, it reduces your ACB. If a T3 slip shows an amount in Box 42, a positive figure means you subtract it from your ACB, a negative figure means you add it. If return of capital reductions push your ACB below zero during the year, the negative amount is treated as a capital gain reportable on Schedule 3, even though you did not sell anything.⁵

Financial institutions rarely track these adjustments for you. Keep every T3 and T5 slip over the life of the investment. You will need them to reconstruct an accurate ACB when a T5008 finally shows up for the sale.

Reporting T5008 Data on Schedule 3

Schedule 3, Capital Gains or Losses, is where T5008 figures land. The CRA notes that most of the gains and losses on Schedule 3 come from T5008 slips.⁶ For each disposition, you fill in five columns:

Year you acquired the security.
Proceeds of disposition, from Box 21 of your T5008.
Your calculated adjusted cost base.
Outlays and expenses, such as selling commissions.
Capital gain or loss: proceeds minus ACB minus outlays.

Different securities go on different lines. Publicly traded shares and mutual fund units go on line 13199 for proceeds and line 13200 for the gain or loss. Bonds and debentures go on line 15199 and line 15300.⁶ The net taxable capital gain from Schedule 3 flows to line 12700 of your T1.

Only a portion of your gain is taxable. For 2026, the inclusion rate is one-half: a $10,000 capital gain adds $5,000 to taxable income at your marginal rate.⁷ The same fraction applies to losses. A 2024 proposal to raise the inclusion rate to two-thirds on gains above $250,000 was cancelled in March 2025, and the CRA continues to administer the one-half rate.⁸ Confirm the current rate on the CRA website before filing.

Converting Foreign Currency Transactions

When your T5008 reports a transaction in a foreign currency, convert both the proceeds and the cost to Canadian dollars before entering them on Schedule 3. Use the Bank of Canada exchange rate for the specific day the amount arose: the settlement date for proceeds, the original purchase date for cost.⁹ If no rate was quoted on a particular day, use the closest preceding day for which one exists.

The CRA may accept an average exchange rate over a period for certain income items, but not when rates fluctuated significantly during that period.⁹ The daily rate for each transaction is safest. Keep a record of every rate you used, in case the CRA reviews your return.

One side effect worth noting: because proceeds convert at one date’s rate and cost at another’s, part of your reported gain or loss can come from currency movement rather than the investment itself. Schedule 3 has no separate line for this. The currency effect is simply baked into the number you report.

The Superficial Loss Rule

If you sell a security at a loss and repurchase the same or an identical property inside a narrow window, the CRA can deny the loss. A superficial loss occurs when both of the following are true:

You or an affiliated person buys the same or identical property during the period starting 30 calendar days before the sale and ending 30 calendar days after it.
You or the affiliated person still owns that property 30 calendar days after the sale.

Affiliated persons include your spouse or common-law partner, a corporation controlled by you or your spouse, and certain partnerships and trusts where you hold a majority interest. The disallowed loss is not lost forever. If you were the one who acquired the replacement property, the denied loss gets added to the ACB of that replacement, so you recover it when you eventually sell.¹⁰

This rule catches investors who sell in December to harvest a tax loss and buy the same stock back in early January. Unless 30 full days pass between the sale and the repurchase, the loss is superficial. The T5008 will still show the disposition, but the loss cannot go on Schedule 3.

What to Do If the Slip Is Wrong or Incomplete

Blank or wrong Box 20 figures are the most common complaint about the T5008. Brokers often do not track your historical purchase cost, particularly for securities transferred from another firm. The CRA places responsibility for the correct ACB squarely on you.¹ Keep every trade confirmation, brokerage statement, and commission receipt for as long as you hold the investment. Those are your proof.

If Box 21 is wrong, contact the issuing institution and ask for an amended T5008. The issuer is responsible for correcting data it filed with the CRA. If an amended slip will not arrive before your filing deadline, report the correct figures on Schedule 3 anyway. Include a note explaining the discrepancy and the steps you took to have it corrected. Your own documents are what justify your numbers, even when they contradict the slip.

T5008 Slips From Registered Accounts

You may sometimes get a T5008 for a transaction inside a registered account. Issuers are generally exempt from filing T5008 slips for transactions within registered plans that are tax-exempt under section 149 of the Income Tax Act, but some brokers issue them anyway as part of standard reporting.² If a T5008 reports a transaction that took place entirely within a TFSA, RRSP, or RRIF, do not report it on Schedule 3. Gains and losses inside those accounts are not taxable events. File the slip away, unless the account has lost its registered status through over-contribution or prohibited investment rules.

Penalties for Failing to Report

Because the CRA receives T5008 data directly from your broker, unreported dispositions are easy to flag. If you fail to report $500 or more of income and you also failed to report income in any of the three preceding tax years, the CRA can assess a repeated failure penalty. The penalty is the lesser of 10% of the unreported amount or 50% of the difference between the understated tax and any tax already withheld on that amount.¹¹

The stakes rise if the CRA finds you knowingly made a false statement or omitted income through gross negligence. The penalty is then the greater of $100 or 50% of the understated tax related to the false statement.¹¹ Interest accrues on any unpaid balance from the original due date.

If you discover a past error, the CRA’s Voluntary Disclosures Program may let you correct filings with reduced or waived penalties, provided you come forward before the CRA contacts you about it.¹² The program was updated effective October 1, 2025, so check current application requirements before submitting.

1
Canada Revenue Agency. T5008 Statement of Securities Transactions – Slip Information for Individuals
2
Canada Revenue Agency. T5008 Guide – Return of Securities Transactions
3
Canada Revenue Agency. Return of Securities Transactions T5008 – T5008 Slip
4
Canada Revenue Agency. Special Rules and Other Transactions
5
Canada Revenue Agency. Tax Treatment of Mutual Funds
6
Canada Revenue Agency. Completing Schedule 3
7
Canada Revenue Agency. Update on the Canada Revenue Agency’s Administration of the Proposed Capital Gains Taxation Changes
8
Prime Minister of Canada. Prime Minister Mark Carney Cancels Proposed Capital Gains Tax Increase
9
Canada Revenue Agency. Income Tax Folio S5-F4-C1 – Income Tax Reporting Currency
10
Canada Revenue Agency. Capital Losses
11
Canada Revenue Agency. False Reporting or Repeated Failure to Report Income
12
Canada Revenue Agency. Voluntary Disclosures Program