Line 58360 on the Canadian tax return is a provincial or territorial line on Form 428 tied to pension income. It is not the line for the Digital News Subscription Tax Credit. That credit was claimed on Line 31350 of the T1 Income Tax and Benefit Return, and it applied only to the 2020 through 2024 tax years. If you were sent to line 58360 while looking for the digital news credit, the number is close but the line is wrong.
What Line 58360 Is
Line 58360 appears on Form 428, the provincial or territorial tax form that accompanies your federal T1. It relates to pension income, not journalism subscriptions. If pension income is not what you were researching, you are almost certainly looking for Line 31350 instead, which is where the digital news subscription credit lived during the years it was available.
Line 31350 and the Digital News Subscription Credit
Line 31350 was the federal line for claiming the Digital News Subscription Tax Credit. Section 118.02 of the Income Tax Act limits the credit to taxation years “before 2025,” and the CRA confirms it is not available for 2025 or later tax years.1Canada Revenue Agency. Digital News Subscription Expenses No legislation has extended it. If you are filing a 2025 or later return, this credit does not apply.
Can You Still Claim It for a Past Year?
Yes, within limits. The CRA allows refund adjustments for up to 10 calendar years after the end of the tax year in question.2Canada.ca. Changing a Tax Return – Personal Income Tax The 2020 credit can be claimed until the end of 2030, and the 2024 credit until the end of 2034. If you paid for a qualifying digital news subscription anytime between 2020 and 2024 and did not claim the credit, going back for it is still on the table.
The credit is non-refundable. It can only reduce tax owing for the year in question. If you owed nothing in that year, adjusting the return produces no refund on its own.
Who Qualified
Any individual who paid for a qualifying digital news subscription from a Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization (QCJO) could claim the credit. The subscription had to give access to content in digital form that was primarily written news.3Canada.ca. About the Digital News Subscription Tax Credit Video-heavy platforms and organizations holding a broadcasting licence under the Broadcasting Act did not qualify, even when they published written content on the side.
Only subscriptions to organizations officially designated as QCJOs qualified. The CRA maintained a list of qualifying subscriptions for each tax year from 2020 to 2024. That list is now closed but remains the reference point for whether a subscription you paid for in those years counts.4Canada.ca. List of Qualifying Digital News Subscriptions
Spouses, common-law partners, and even roommates could split the credit between them, provided the combined amount did not exceed what one person could claim on their own.3Canada.ca. About the Digital News Subscription Tax Credit
How Much the Credit Was Worth
The credit was 15% of your qualifying subscription expenses for the year, up to $500 in expenses. The largest possible credit in any single year was $75. The statutory formula multiplied the lowest personal income tax rate (15%) by the lesser of $500 or the total qualifying subscription expenses actually paid.5Department of Justice Canada. Income Tax Act – 118.02 Pay $300 for a qualifying subscription, and the credit is $45. Pay $600, and eligible expenses are capped at $500 and the credit stays at $75.
Multiple subscriptions could be combined, but the $500 cap applied to the total across all of them.
Bundled Subscriptions
Bundles that mixed print, video, or non-QCJO content required extra work. The eligible expense was limited to the cost of a stand-alone digital subscription to the QCJO’s content. If no stand-alone version existed, the eligible amount was limited to the cost of a comparable stand-alone digital subscription from another QCJO. If no comparable subscription existed either, only half of what you paid counted as an eligible expense.3Canada.ca. About the Digital News Subscription Tax Credit
How to Claim or Adjust a Past Return
If you are filing an original return for a year from 2020 through 2024, enter the credit on Line 31350. If the return has already been filed and the credit was missed, request an adjustment through the CRA’s Change My Return service in your online account, or by mailing a completed T1-ADJ form.2Canada.ca. Changing a Tax Return – Personal Income Tax Electronic filing of older returns is available through CRA-certified tax software using NETFILE.6Canada.ca. Tax Software for Filing Personal Taxes
Do not send receipts with the return. Keep them yourself. To support the claim you need a receipt from the news provider showing the subscription cost, the QCJO’s name, and ideally its CRA-assigned identification number. For bundled subscriptions, keep the working notes that show how you arrived at the qualifying portion.
The CRA requires tax records and supporting documents to be kept for at least six years, and for the digital news credit specifically, the agency asked subscribers to keep receipts in case a review was opened.7Canada.ca. How Long Should You Keep Your Income Tax Records If you amend a past return now, the six-year retention period restarts from the date of the reassessment.