About calc-hq.ca
calc-hq.ca is an independent project that builds plain-language Canadian payroll, tax, and benefit calculators. The goal is narrow and honest: give you an accurate number and explain the mechanic behind it, without the filler.
Who's behind it
This is a one-person project, built and maintained from Ontario. There's no team page here because there's no team to describe — just someone who got tired of tax calculators that were either out of date, vague about their assumptions, or buried the answer under three screens of ads and preamble.
So that's the whole positioning: no experts to name, no credentials to inflate. What matters isn't who built it — it's whether the numbers are right and where they came from. That's the part worth being loud about.
How the numbers are verified
Every tax constant on this site — each bracket threshold, rate, basic personal amount, contribution maximum, and benefit figure — is checked against the primary government source that publishes it. Not a blog, not an aggregator, not last year's number carried forward. The primary sources include:
- the Canada Revenue Agency (federal brackets, BPA, CPP/CPP2, EI, the Canada Child Benefit);
- Retraite Québec and Revenu Québec (the Québec Pension Plan, QPIP, and Quebec's own brackets and basic amount);
- and each provincial and territorial finance ministry for the province-specific brackets, credits, and surtaxes.
Each value is stored with its source link and the date it was last confirmed, and the whole set is re-audited on a maintenance cadence — every January when the payroll tables re-index, in July when benefits like the CCB re-index, and whenever a province enacts a mid-year change. When a source and an old value disagree, the source wins and the change is logged. That audit trail is deliberately stricter than what most Canadian tax calculators keep — many quietly reuse figures for years — and it's the main reason to trust a number here.
What this is — and isn't
These calculators are estimates for general information. They're built to be as accurate as published government figures allow, but they can't know your full situation, and they are not tax, legal, or financial advice. For a binding answer about your own return or benefits, the CRA, Revenu Québec, and Service Canada are the authorities. Treat the numbers here as a well-sourced starting point, then confirm anything you're about to act on.
Get in touch
Spotted a figure that looks wrong, or want to talk about sponsorship? That kind of message genuinely helps keep the site accurate — reach out through the contact page.