The credit is non-refundable, meaning it can reduce your tax payable to zero, but you won’t get a refund for any excess amount. Canada uses a two-tiered system: you get a federal credit at the lowest tax rate (15%) on the first $200 of donations, and a higher rate (29% or 33% for high-income earners) on amounts over $200. You also get a provincial credit which varies by province.

You can generally claim eligible donations up to a limit of 75% of your net income for the year. In the year of death and the preceding year, this limit is increased to 100% of net income.

Yes. If you don’t need to use all your eligible donations to reduce your tax payable to zero this year, you can carry the unused amount forward and claim it in any of the next five years.

You can pool your receipts and have one spouse claim the entire amount. This is beneficial because the higher credit rate applies only to donations exceeding $200. By combining, you only have to pass the $200 threshold once, maximizing your credit at the higher rate.

Donating publicly traded stocks, mutual funds, or bonds directly to a charity is one of the most tax-efficient ways to give. When you do this, you get a tax receipt for the full market value of the security, and you don’t have to pay any capital gains tax on the appreciated value.

Since you can carry forward donations for up to five years, you can save up smaller donation receipts and claim them all in a future year. This can be useful if you expect to be in a higher tax bracket later, or simply to get more of your donation total credited at the higher rate.