Characters Accepted by CRA

CRA Acceptable Characters

CRA has clarified their restrictions on the characters (letters/numbers/symbols) that will be accepted in electronic submission (XML) files for a number of types of data fields:

“Please note that the CRA introduced a stricter validation process in January 2025. XML files that do not conform with our schema and specifications may now be rejected.”

These restrictions apply to addresses, recipient names, certification and contact names and other data fields. CRA has confirmed that XML submissions which follow these guidelines will not be rejected when uploaded. These restrictions do not apply to Revenu Québec XML submissions.

Acceptable Character Lists

These are the accepted character lists that apply to addresses, recipient names, certification and contact names, and other data elements; click one of the links below for details:

Addresses - Characters accepted by CRA
Recipient Names - Characters accepted by CRA
Contact Names - Characters accepted by CRA
Other Data - Characters accepted by CRA

What Should You Do?

By default, AvanTax Filing Services will create and submit XML files which include all characters in your data, even if they are not on the lists above. Prior to uploading your data, you have the choice to either use characters not on the lists above (knowing that CRA will replace them with spaces), or edit your data to replace those characters with suitable alternatives from the list above.

Your employees / recipients may notice that non-standard characters in their names and addresses have been replaced by spaces in their CRA accounts, but all forms created by AvanTax Filing Services will show the data exactly as it exists in the data which we received from you.

What Will CRA Do?

CRA may issue warnings about potentially invalid characters in the XML file, but should allow XML submission to proceed. CRA has confirmed that XML files which include characters not in the lists above will be accepted, but those characters will be replaced by spaces during processing.

Please note that CRA could still reject an XML submission, for validation issues not discussed above.