Canada RIT stands for refund of income tax, and it's the friendliest label in the deposit code family: the CRA returning your own money. The question that's left is which of the two triggers sent it.
Canada RIT is the bank label for an income tax refund from the CRA. It arrives about 2 weeks after e-filing your return, or at any point in the year when the CRA reassesses a past return in your favour. It's always matched by a notice in CRA My Account.
Match your situation to the trigger. The timing usually settles it, and the notice in CRA My Account settles what the timing doesn't.
| Trigger | When it lands | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Your spring refund | About 2 weeks after e-filing | The refund from your return, paid after assessment. Paper returns stretch to 8 weeks. |
| An adjustment you requested | Weeks after a T1 adjustment or ReFILE | You claimed a missed credit or corrected a slip, and the reassessment paid out what you'd missed. |
| A CRA-initiated reassessment | Any time, often fall and winter | Slip matching or a correction changed a past return in your favour, sometimes with interest added. |
A reassessment happened. The CRA re-runs past returns all year: it matches T-slips employers and banks filed after you'd already submitted, processes adjustment requests, and applies court or policy changes to old assessments. A reassessment in your favour pays out as a fresh RIT deposit whenever it completes, and that's why these deposits surprise people in October or February.
The paper trail is always one click away. Every reassessment generates a notice in CRA My Account explaining what changed and how the number was built, including any refund interest. A RIT deposit with no matching notice doesn't happen; when the deposit looks unfamiliar, the notice is where the answer sits.
One nuance worth knowing at tax time: the refund is your own money and isn't taxable, but refund interest the CRA adds is taxable income for the year you receive it. It's a small line, and it's the only part of a RIT deposit the CRA expects back on a future return.
RIT is the only code that returns your own money; the others don't, they deliver benefits. FPT carries the CCB and the Groceries and Essentials Benefit, PRO carries provincial programs like the Ontario Trillium Benefit, and FED covers other federal payments. One decoder page maps them all.
See all four deposit codesRefund timing and reassessment facts come from the CRA's refund and notice pages on canada.ca. Last verified July 8, 2026; it's the same re-check process every page here follows, corrected within 24 hours when anything changes.