Our daughter is first year of college, no income and never filed tax before. To transfer her tax credit to one of us does she have to file first separately a return?

[TurboTaxTara]

Assuming we're talking about tuition amounts, yes, your daughter needs to file a return.

The CRA requires that the student claim their tuition amounts first, and then they can transfer whatever amount they don't need to reduce their tax payable to zero to someone.

You don't need to file her return first, but it does need to be filed. It's typically a good idea to do the (simpler) dependant return first so that you can easily grab the transfer amounts you need for your return.

Here's where to get the transfer amount from your daughter's return: https://turbotax.community.intuit.ca/replies/2648072

And here's how to enter the amount in your return: https://turbotax.community.intuit.ca/replies/2647703