Home buyers’ amount (line 31270)

What it is and when you get it

This is the simplest of the first-time buyer programs and the most commonly forgotten, because it does nothing at all on closing day.

You buy the home. Months later you file your tax return for that year. You enter up to $10,000 on one line of the return (Canada Revenue Agency, line 31270, verified 28 August 2026). It reduces the federal tax you owe.

There is no application, no separate form, and no approval process. If you do not put the number on the line, you do not get it. That is the entire reason people miss it.

Read the number carefully, because this is the most common error on real estate websites. The $10,000 is the amount you claim (Canada Revenue Agency, line 31270, verified 28 August 2026), not money you get back. The credit is that amount multiplied by the lowest federal personal income tax rate, so what actually comes off your tax bill is a fraction of $10,000 — anyone promising you “$10,000 back” has misread the line. That rate is set federally and has been under active change, so confirm the current one before you work out what the credit is worth to you.

What non-refundable actually means for you

This is the part that gets misread, and it changes who benefits.

A non-refundable credit reduces tax you owe. It cannot take your tax bill below zero and it cannot generate a refund on its own.

If you owed federal tax that year, the credit reduces it, and if you had already paid that tax through payroll deductions you get more back as a refund. That is the normal case, and most working buyers are in it.

If you owed no federal tax at all that year, the credit is worth nothing. It is not carried forward to a future year and it is not paid out to you.

So a buyer with very low income in the year of purchase, or one whose income was already fully offset by other credits, may get nothing from this. That is by design, and it is worth knowing before you count on it.

Who can claim it

Two conditions have to be met.

• You, or your spouse or common-law partner, acquired a qualifying home in the year, and it is registered in one of your names.
• You did not live in another home that you, or your spouse or common-law partner, owned in the year of purchase or in a set number of preceding calendar years.

The details behind those two conditions

A qualifying home is broad. It covers most housing types in the GTA, including detached, semi-detached, townhouses, condominium units, apartments in a duplex or triplex, and mobile homes. Both new and resale homes count, which distinguishes this from the GST/HST rebates.

The home has to be in Canada, and you have to intend to occupy it as your principal place of residence within a set period after acquiring it. A property bought purely to rent out does not qualify.

The ownership look-back is the same shape as the other federal programs: it asks about living in a home you owned, over a period counted in whole calendar years. Note that here your spouse’s or common-law partner’s ownership is part of the test, not only your own.

Confirm the exact length of the look-back period, because it is a figure and it is the one people most often get wrong from memory.

The disability exception

There is a route to this credit that does not require you to be a first-time buyer at all.

A person eligible for the disability tax credit can claim the home buyers’ amount even if they have owned a home before. So can someone who buys a home for the benefit of a related person who is eligible for the disability tax credit.

The condition is purpose. The purchase has to enable the person with the disability to live in a home that is more accessible, or better suited to their needs, than the one they were in.

This exception is materially underused. If you or a family member you are buying for is eligible for the disability tax credit, confirm the current conditions with the CRA or an accountant, because the credit may be available even on a second or third home.

Splitting it with a spouse or partner

Two people buying together do not get two credits. There is one credit per qualifying home.

You can split it between spouses or common-law partners, but the combined claim cannot exceed $10,000 (Canada Revenue Agency, line 31270, verified 28 August 2026). Splitting is a way to allocate the benefit, not to double it.

Splitting is worth doing where one partner does not owe enough federal tax to absorb the whole credit. Because it is non-refundable, an unused portion in one person’s hands is simply lost. Moving part of it to the partner who has tax to offset recovers it.

If only one of you meets the conditions, that person claims the full amount. It cannot be split with someone who does not qualify.

Where two unrelated people buy together, the rules are different from the spousal case. Confirm how the credit is allocated before you both file.

How to claim it

Enter the amount on the designated line of your federal return for the year you acquired the home. Tax software will ask a question about buying a first home; answering it correctly fills the line for you.

You do not send documents with the return. The CRA can ask for supporting documents afterwards, so keep the agreement of purchase and sale and the lawyer’s statement of adjustments. Keep them for the retention period the CRA requires.

If you bought in a previous year and never claimed it, you can generally ask the CRA to adjust that year’s return. There is a limit on how far back adjustments can go. Confirm the current window, then request the change through your CRA account or the standard adjustment form.

What this credit does not do

It is worth being clear about the size of it, because the name promises more than it delivers.

This is not a down payment program. It does not put money in your hands before closing, it does not help you qualify for a mortgage, and it will not cover your closing costs on its own.

It is a modest amount off your tax bill, months after you move in — the lowest federal tax rate applied to a claim of at most $10,000 (Canada Revenue Agency, line 31270, verified 28 August 2026), not $10,000 itself. Treat it as a small reimbursement toward closing costs that arrives at tax time, and claim it, because it costs nothing to claim and it is the easiest of these programs to leave on the table.

It is also entirely separate from the Ontario land transfer tax refund, the GST/HST rebates, and the FHSA and Home Buyers’ Plan. Claiming this does not affect any of them.