Quebec's tax credit for children's activities: claiming dance classes

The credit covers physical activities, but also artistic, cultural or recreational ones. A ballet, hip-hop, jazz or contemporary class therefore falls within the credit, just like a soccer season or piano lessons.

What matters is the format of the class, not the style. The class must be part of a program lasting at least eight consecutive weeks, or at least five consecutive days for a vacation camp, and the activities must be supervised. It must not be part of a school's curriculum either; an extracurricular class offered at school is not considered part of it.

• A ten- or fifteen-week fall session: eligible.
• A full year, from September to June: eligible.
• A dance camp running five consecutive days: eligible, if more than half of each day's activities are physical, artistic, cultural or recreational.
• An extracurricular dance class after school hours, at school: eligible if it lasts at least eight weeks.
• A one-Saturday workshop or a trial class: not eligible, too short.
• A dance class given during school hours, as part of your child's school curriculum: not eligible.
• A sports-study or arts-study program, such as a danse-études program: not eligible, Revenu Québec expressly excludes these fees.
• Private lessons given by someone who was under 18 at the time of payment: not eligible.

For the 2025 taxation year, the credit equals 20% of the eligible fees paid for a child, up to a maximum of $500 in fees. The maximum credit is therefore $100 per child. For a child with a severe and prolonged impairment in mental or physical functions, if the eligible fees are at least $125, you add $500 to the fees, up to a total of $1,000: the credit can then reach $200.

The limit applies child by child, and all of one child's activities add up. A few examples for an eligible family:

• A 15-week dance session at $480: 20% of $480, or a $96 credit.
• The same session, plus a $300 swimming season for the same child: $780 in fees, capped at $500, or a $100 credit.
• Two children each enrolled in the $480 session: $96 each, or $192 for the family.

For the 2025 taxation year, the credit covers children born between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2019, or from January 1, 2007 for a child with a severe and prolonged impairment. The child can be yours, your spouse's, or a child in your custody. In practice, for 2025, a child born in 2020, who turned five during the year, does not qualify yet; a teenager born in 2009, who turned 16 in 2025, qualifies one last time.

You must also have been resident in Quebec on December 31, and family income must not exceed $168,470 for the 2025 taxation year. Family income is the amount on line 275 of your return, plus the amount on line 275 of your spouse's return if you had a spouse on December 31. Above the threshold, no credit is granted. The threshold is indexed every year; the 2026 figure will be published by Revenu Québec before tax season.

Revenu Québec requires you to hold a receipt showing, among other things, the registration or membership fees paid. You do not attach it to your return, but you must be able to provide it if Revenu Québec asks. Keep it with your other documents for the year.

No receipt template is prescribed. A receipt that avoids questions includes at least the following:

• The name of the enrolled child, not only the name of the paying parent.
• The studio's name and contact details.
• The activity and its period: start and end dates of the session.
• The amount paid during the year, including taxes if any.
• If possible, costume fees or recital tickets on separate lines: they are not necessarily registration fees, and separating them lets you claim only what is eligible.

The credit is claimed on your Quebec income tax return, at line 462; Revenu Québec's line-by-line help explains it at point 25, with a work chart. You calculate the credit for each child, then carry the total to line 462. Most tax software asks the question directly.

Count the fees paid during the calendar year, from January 1 to December 31, not during the dance year. A fall session paid in September counts for the current year; the winter session paid in January counts for the next one. That is why a yearly statement totalling the calendar year's payments is more useful than one receipt per session.

If another person can also claim the credit for the same child, for example the other parent after a separation, you can split it in whatever proportion you choose. The total claimed cannot exceed the credit a single person would have received.

A summer day camp whose main purpose is child care falls under a different credit, the one for childcare expenses. For that camp, the studio gives you an RL-24 slip, not a simple receipt. Weekly dance classes, on the other hand, do not qualify for the childcare credit: no RL-24 slip is issued for them. And the same fees cannot count twice: fees already used for another tax credit or a deduction, or that were reimbursed to you, do not qualify for the tax credit for children's activities.

Federally, the children's fitness and children's arts tax credits were eliminated starting with the 2017 taxation year. If someone mentions "the sports credit", in Quebec they mean the tax credit for children's activities described here.

In January, your families will be the ones asking for "the receipt for taxes". Our guide to tax receipts for dance classes in Quebec details what a studio must give, when a camp requires an RL-24 slip, and what GST and QST change.

With Cadanse, every payment produces a PDF receipt in the student's name, which parents download from their portal, and a yearly statement per family totals the amounts paid during the year for each child. You can send it one by one or in bulk. Cadanse does not claim the credit on parents' behalf and does not replace tax advice: it saves you from rebuilding the year's payments in a spreadsheet.