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Home > Guides > CRA address change
Update your address in CRA My Account, by phone, or by mail, and do it before your next benefit or refund payment is issued. A Canada Post mail redirection order does not update the CRA's records: it only reroutes the envelope, and government cheques do not always forward cleanly. Treat the CRA update and the postal redirection as two separate tasks.
Redirection reroutes envelopes addressed to your old address; it does not tell the CRA you moved. The CRA keeps mailing to the address in its own system, and redirected government cheques are a known failure point: cheques can be returned or held instead of forwarded, depending on the endorsement. Direct deposit sidesteps most of this, but the address on file still needs updating because the CRA uses it for notices, reassessments, and identity verification.
| Channel | What to have ready |
|---|---|
| CRA My Account | Your sign-in credentials; the new address with the correct postal code |
| Phone | Your SIN, date of birth, and details from a recent return for identity verification |
| Signed letter with full name, SIN, old address, new address, and a contact number |
As soon as the new address is certain, and definitely before the next payment run. Benefit payments like the Canada Child Benefit follow a fixed schedule, and a change made after the payment is cut means the money goes to the old address. If you receive paper cheques, also confirm whether the redirection covers them or whether you should switch to direct deposit at the same time: one phone call can handle both.
Contact the CRA. Undelivered cheques eventually return to the CRA and can be reissued, but "eventually" is the operative word: it takes weeks. Keep proof of when you submitted the address change, because it establishes that you acted in time if a payment goes missing. This is the practical reason to update online rather than by mail when a payment is close: the timestamp is immediate and logged.
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