Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit Calculator

Estimate your quarterly Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit (CGEB), formerly the GST/HST credit, for July 2026 to June 2027, from your family’s 2025 income. It adds your province’s credit where CRA pays one.

✓ 2026 rates · verified Oct 27, 2026

What the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit is

It’s the GST/HST credit under a new name. CRA says it replaced the GST/HST credit in July 2026, with the same eligibility and calculation, and amounts 25% higher for five years, from 2026 to 2031. It’s tax-free and paid four times a year, from your previous year’s return: the July 2026 to June 2027 payments use your 2025 income.

The one-time 50% top-up paid by June 2026 (Finance Canada’s backgrounder) is over and isn’t included here.

How it’s calculated

The yearly amount is a maximum for your family less 5% of your adjusted family net income over $46,432 (Income Tax Act s. 122.5(3.005)). The maximum adds up:

• $445 for you;
• $445 for your spouse or common-law partner, or, if you’re single with children, $445 for your first child;
• $234 for each other child under 19;
• $234 more for a single parent; or, for a single person with no children, the single supplement described below.

A couple with two children gets $445 + $445 + 2 × $234 = $1,358.00. At $40,000 of family income there’s nothing to take off, so that’s the benefit: $1,358.00 a year, or $339.50 a quarter. At $60,000 the reduction is 5% of $13,568, $678.40, leaving $679.60. The benefit runs out at $73,592, where 5% of the income over $46,432 equals the whole $1,358.00.

If you’re single with children, your first child counts like a spouse ($445) and you get the $234 single-parent supplement, so one child at $30,000 gives $1,124.00. This calculator assumes you claim your first child as an eligible dependant, as most single parents do.

The single supplement

A single person with no children gets up to $234 more, phased in at 2% of their own net income over $11,564. It brings the single maximum to $679, but only once income passes $23,264: at $20,000 it’s 2% of $8,436, $168.72, for $613.72 in all. The idea is to help people who live alone and work for low pay; someone with very little income gets the basic $445.

It uses your own net income, not your family’s. For a single person they’re usually the same; they differ only when your net income includes RDSP or Universal Child Care Benefit amounts, which adjusted family net income leaves out.

Your province’s add-on

CRA pays some provinces’ credits with the CGEB, or next to it (RC4210). This calculator works out the three whose full formula CRA publishes: an Ontario couple with two children at $40,000 gets $1,364.36 of Ontario sales tax credit, a New Brunswick single parent with two children at $45,000 gets $500.00 of HST credit, and a Nova Scotia couple with one child at $35,000 gets $65.00 of affordable living tax credit.

Newfoundland and Labrador also pays a seniors’ benefit with the CGEB; it depends on age, which this calculator doesn’t ask, so it isn’t shown. CRA doesn’t pay a provincial or territorial credit with the CGEB in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec or the territories.

File a return every year

You don’t apply for the CGEB: CRA works it out from your return, and your spouse’s or partner’s. If either of you doesn’t file, even with no income, the payments stop. The same family net income sets the Canada Child Benefit, paid monthly to families with children under 18: see our Canada Child Benefit calculator.

What this calculator assumes

• Your family and children stay the same from July 2026 to June 2027. CRA recalculates after a change in marital status or children, and a child turning 19 drops off from the next quarter.
• With shared custody, all the children you enter are shared. If you’re single with children, your first child is claimed as an eligible dependant.
• You’re 19 or older (or have a spouse or child), a resident of Canada, and you and your spouse filed 2025 returns.
• Ontario sales tax credit: no one in your family is a senior. Not included: the Newfoundland and Labrador income supplement, seniors’ benefit and disability amount, the Saskatchewan low-income tax credit and the PEI essentials benefit (shown as text).

Rates for tax year 2026, verified October 27, 2026 · Page updated October 27, 2026