Students can transfer up to $5,000 of their current year’s federal tuition amount, minus what's needed to bring their federal tax owing to zero. Depending on the province or territory’s tuition, education, and textbook credits, the amount students can transfer depends on the local maximum, minus what's needed to reduce their provincial tax owing to zero.

Students must claim their tuition amounts and reduce their own tax payable to zero before transferring any unused credits to someone else. After claiming their tuition fees, TurboTax will show how much of their remaining credits can be transferred to an eligible recipient.

How much should your child or spouse transfer?

It's usually best to only take what you need. The student can save the rest for another year when it might come in handy. If you use more of the student’s transfer amount than needed to bring your tax down to zero, the extra will go to waste.

Once your child or spouse transfers their leftover tuition credits and you know how much they transferred, you can go to your tax return and claim the transferred tuition credits.

Who can the leftover credits be transferred to?

If you're the student’s spouse/partner, or the parent or grandparent of either the student or their spouse/partner, you may be eligible to use their leftover credits to help reduce how much tax you owe.

Your child or spouse can only transfer any tuition credits left over from the current year. They can only transfer these credits to one person, even if they're transferring federal and provincial/territorial amounts. They don’t have to transfer unused credits to the same person every year.

For more information, visit the Provincial and territorial tax and credits for individuals page.