The Estate Information Return is not part of the probate application. It is a separate filing to the Ministry of Finance, due within 180 days of the certificate of appointment being issued, and it reports the value of everything the estate administration tax was calculated on.
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From $563.87 taxes included
The application for a certificate of appointment of estate trustee goes to the Superior Court of Justice for the county or district where the deceased lived at death, along with payment of the estate administration tax. The Estate Information Return goes somewhere else entirely, to the Ministry of Finance, and it goes later. Nothing in the court process reminds you. Trustees who assume probate is finished when the certificate arrives are the ones who miss it.
The clock runs from the date the certificate is issued, not the date of death and not the date you filed the application. Diarize it the day the certificate arrives. If the court takes four months to issue, you still get the full period. But if the certificate sat unopened in a file for six weeks, the deadline moved without you and nobody sent a warning.
The return reports the value of the estate as at the date of death: Ontario real property net of registered encumbrances, bank accounts, investments, vehicles, business interests and personal property. Real property outside Ontario is excluded. So are assets that passed by survivorship or by beneficiary designation, because they never formed part of the estate the certificate covers. The <a href="https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90e21">Estates Act</a> governs the appointment; the Estate Administration Tax Act, 1998 governs the return.
The tax itself is nil on the first $50,000 of the estate, then $15 per $1,000, or part of $1,000, on everything above that. A $240,000 estate pays $2,850. Those rates have applied since 1 January 2020. The return is how the Ministry checks the figure you paid with the application, so the two documents have to agree with each other.
Every figure is fair market value as at the date of death, and you should be able to prove each one years later. Get an appraisal or a written opinion of value for real property. Ask each bank and investment dealer for date-of-death balances in writing. Value vehicles from a written source. Household contents are worth what they would actually resell for, not what they are insured for.
Only encumbrances registered against Ontario real property reduce the value. A mortgage on the house reduces it. A line of credit, credit card balances, the funeral bill and income tax owing do not. An estate holding a $700,000 house with a $650,000 unsecured debt still reports and pays on the gross value of everything else, which surprises trustees who are thinking about what beneficiaries will actually receive.
Jointly held and beneficiary-designated assets sit outside the return, but not outside your analysis. If a joint account was never intended as a gift, it belongs to the estate and should have been reported. Decide that question before you file rather than after, and read <a href="/joint-ownership-probate-ontario">joint ownership and probate</a> if a parent added an adult child to an account or to title.
Business interests, private company shares, loans made to family members, collections and foreign personal property are the entries that take judgment. Where you estimated, record how you arrived at the number and keep the working file. A trustee who can produce a dated valuation and a short note explaining it has an answer for both the Ministry and an unhappy beneficiary.
If an asset surfaces later, or a valuation turns out to be materially wrong, you file an amended return and pay any additional tax. The amended return is due within 60 calendar days of your becoming aware that what you filed was incorrect or incomplete, and the duty to correct runs for four years from the date the certificate was issued. Overpaid tax can be refunded on the same principle, on a request made to the Ministry of Finance rather than at the courthouse.
Failing to file is an offence under the Estate Administration Tax Act, 1998, not merely an administrative lapse. Separately, the Ministry can assess the estate for unpaid tax after the fact, and a trustee who has already paid everything out has no fund left to pay it from. That is the practical risk: the money is gone and the obligation is not.
The Ministry can assess or reassess the estate for four years after the tax became due, which is the day the certificate was issued, and at any time at all where no return was filed by the deadline or the information given amounted to a misrepresentation. Keep the appraisals, the bank confirmations, the vehicle valuations and your notes with the estate accounts for the life of the file. If a beneficiary later disputes what you reported or what you paid, that file is your answer, and reconstructing it after the fact rarely works.
Preparing the probate application and the return together is ordinary work for an estates lawyer, and it is faster than fixing an incorrect filing. Our published fee for wills and estates work is $563.87, taxes included, with the full schedule on our <a href="/pricing">pricing page</a>. See <a href="/wills-estates">wills and estates</a> for the rest of the administration, including the federal tax clearance that comes after.
A return is required whenever a certificate of appointment has been issued, even where the estate fell under the $50,000 threshold and no estate administration tax was payable. The obligation follows the certificate, not the tax. A Small Estate Certificate is an estate certificate for this purpose, so a return is required there too. The exceptions are narrow: no return is required where the court has issued a Certificate of Appointment of Succeeding Estate Trustee, with or without a will, or a Certificate of Appointment of Estate Trustee During Litigation.
From the date the certificate of appointment is issued by the court. Not the date of death, not the date you swore the application, and not the date you received the certificate in the mail. Check the issue date stamped on the certificate itself and calendar the deadline immediately, because no reminder is sent and the period runs out quietly.
File on time using your best supportable estimate and document how you reached it, then amend once you have the appraisal. Late filing is an offence; an estimate corrected by an amended return is not. Order appraisals the week the certificate arrives, since real property and business valuations are usually what runs the clock down.
No. Property held in joint tenancy passes to the survivor outside the estate, so it is neither taxed nor reported. The same applies to registered plans and life insurance with a named beneficiary. The caution is that a joint arrangement can be challenged as never having been a gift, in which case the asset was estate property all along.
You file an amended return and pay the additional estate administration tax. If the estate has already been paid out there is no fund to pay from, and recovering money from beneficiaries is difficult. This is the main reason to complete the asset search before distributing, and to hold a reserve until the estate's obligations are known and settled.
Open your file tonight — a licensed Ontario lawyer will confirm everything with you by tomorrow.