Wealthsimple Tax vs an Expense Tracker: Do You Need Both? (Canada, 2026)

Short answer: Wealthsimple Tax and an expense tracker are not competing purchases. Wealthsimple Tax files your return. It does not follow you around for twelve months collecting receipts. If a spreadsheet already gets you accurate totals by CRA line, you do not need to buy anything else, and this page will tell you when that stops being true.

We make an expense tracker. We are also going to spend the first half of this page explaining when you should not buy one.

What Wealthsimple Tax actually is

Wealthsimple Tax is NETFILE-certified filing software. It is certified by the CRA and Revenu Québec, it is used by over two million Canadians, and it fully supports self-employment income: it walks you through the T2125 section by section, including business-use-of-home, vehicle expenses, and capital cost allowance, and it searches several hundred credits and deductions.

Pricing is pay-what-you-want. The Basic tier can be $0 and still includes every income type, including self-employed income. Plus is $40 plus tax and Pro is $80 plus tax, both adding support and review features rather than unlocking the T2125.

For a self-employed Canadian, that is a genuinely excellent deal, and nothing on this page is an argument against using it. We recommend it. Claimable does not NETFILE and never will; it produces the totals you type into software like this.

The thing filing software does not do

Filing software computes your return from numbers you give it. It does not produce those numbers, and it does not substantiate them.

When Wealthsimple Tax asks for your office expenses, it expects one figure for line 8810. Where that figure came from, whether it belongs on 8810 rather than 8811 supplies, whether GST on it was claimed as an input tax credit rather than deducted twice, whether the receipt behind it still exists: all of that happened months earlier, and none of it is filing software's job.

That gap is the year. It is fifty to four hundred transactions, a shoebox or a bank statement, and a set of judgment calls about which CRA line each one belongs on.

When a spreadsheet is genuinely enough

Be honest with yourself against this list. If all of these are true, use Wealthsimple Tax and a spreadsheet, and spend the $249 on something else:

• Your transaction volume is low. Under roughly fifty business expenses a year is very manageable by hand.
• Your expenses are boring. Software subscriptions, a phone bill, some supplies. Few categories, no ambiguity about which line they land on.
• You are not GST/HST registered. Under the $30,000 small-supplier threshold, with no voluntary registration, there is no return to file and no input tax credits to track per expense.
• You have not bought anything depreciable. No vehicle, no camera body, no laptop over a few hundred dollars, nothing that should go into a CCA class rather than being expensed in full.
• You are keeping receipts somewhere already. A folder, a photo album, an email label. The CRA can look back six years, and "I had a spreadsheet" is not substantiation on its own.
• Nothing about your return is contested. No prior review, no reassessment, no unusual claim.

That describes a lot of freelancers, especially in year one or two. If it describes you, you are done. Come back when it stops describing you.

When it stops being enough

Each of these changes the problem from record-keeping into something with a real cost of getting it wrong:

You cross $30,000 in revenue. GST/HST registration becomes mandatory, measured two ways the CRA measures it: rolling four quarters and a single quarter. Now every expense carries an input tax credit you can claim, you owe a return on a filing schedule, and the tax treatment differs by province (HST provinces, GST plus PST in BC, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, GST plus QST in Quebec, GST only in Alberta and the territories). This is the point where spreadsheets start producing wrong numbers quietly.

You buy equipment. Capital cost allowance is not one number. It is a class, a half-year rule in the year of acquisition, an undepreciated capital cost that carries forward every year afterwards, and recapture or terminal loss when you sell or scrap the asset. Filing software will compute this year's claim from the numbers you supply, but it will not notice that the $2,400 laptop you expensed in full last year should have been a Class 50 addition, and it will not carry a UCC schedule you never built.

Your volume climbs. Past a few hundred transactions a year, the annual categorization session stops being an evening and becomes a weekend, and the error rate climbs with the fatigue.

You want the claim to be defensible. Under a CRA review the question is not what your spreadsheet said. It is whether you can produce the original document, show it has not been altered, and explain how you arrived at the number.

Side by side

	Wealthsimple Tax	Spreadsheet + Wealthsimple Tax	Claimable + Wealthsimple Tax
Files your T1 and T2125	Yes, NETFILE	Yes, NETFILE	Yes, NETFILE (via Wealthsimple)
Cost	$0 to $80	$0 to $80	$249 CAD/yr plus filing
Year-round expense capture	No	Manual entry	Scan a receipt, category suggested
Assigns the CRA line number	You choose at filing	You maintain the mapping	Assigned per expense, all year
Original receipts kept	No	Wherever you put them	Attached, with SHA-256 hashes
GST/HST return	Not its job	Manual	Draft-to-filed with ITC reconciliation
$30k threshold warning	No	No	Tracked both CRA ways, warns from 75%
CCA schedule maintained year to year	Computes from your figures	You maintain the UCC	Maintained by class, half-year rule, recapture
Audit package	No	Assemble it yourself	One ZIP, with change history
Best for	Anyone filing	Low volume, simple expenses	Registered, depreciating, or reviewed

The honest summary

Wealthsimple Tax is the right filing choice for most self-employed Canadians and it costs almost nothing. Keep it.

The question is only whether the twelve months before you open it are being handled well enough. If your answer is a folder of photos and a tidy spreadsheet, and you are not GST-registered and own nothing depreciable, that is genuinely fine and we would rather you kept your money.

If you are registered, or you have equipment in play, or you have ever opened that spreadsheet in April and not been able to reconstruct what a charge was for, that is the gap Claimable is built for: expenses carrying their CRA line number from the day you scan them, GST/HST and CCA computed rather than remembered, and an audit package you can hand over without a weekend of assembly.

What it is not: no live bank feed, no double-entry bookkeeping, no payroll, and no NETFILE. It hands off to Wealthsimple Tax; it does not replace it. Pro is $249 CAD per year or $49 CAD per month, after a 14-day free trial with no credit card.

FAQ

Does Wealthsimple Tax handle self-employment income and the T2125? Yes, fully. It walks through the T2125 section by section, including business-use-of-home, motor vehicle expenses, and capital cost allowance, on every tier including the free one. It is NETFILE certified by the CRA and Revenu Québec.

Is Wealthsimple Tax really free for self-employed people? Yes. The Basic tier is pay-what-you-want and can be $0, and it includes all income types including self-employed income. Plus at $40 and Pro at $80 add support and review features; they do not unlock the T2125.

Do I need an expense tracker if I use Wealthsimple Tax? Not necessarily. Filing software expects one total per T2125 line and does not care how you arrived at it. If a spreadsheet plus a folder of receipts gets you accurate totals, that is sufficient. It stops being sufficient once you are GST/HST registered, own depreciable property, or need to substantiate claims under review.

Can Claimable file my return for me? No. Claimable does not NETFILE. It produces the totals a T2125 asks for, by CRA line number, which you enter into Wealthsimple Tax or hand to your accountant. The two are complements, not substitutes.

What is the cheapest correct setup for a self-employed Canadian? For low volume and simple expenses: a spreadsheet, a folder of receipt photos, and Wealthsimple Tax at $0. That is a legitimate, complete answer, and it is what we would tell a friend starting out.

Sources

1. Wealthsimple Tax, product and pricing: https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/product/tax
2. Wealthsimple, report self-employment income on a T2125: https://help.wealthsimple.com/hc/en-ca/articles/4408339655323-Report-self-employment-income-on-a-T2125
3. CRA, NETFILE-certified software: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/e-services/digital-services-individuals/netfile-overview/certified-software-netfile-program.html
4. CRA, Form T2125, Statement of Business or Professional Activities: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/forms/t2125.html
5. CRA, Guide T4002, Self-employed Business, Professional, Commission, Farming, and Fishing Income: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/publications/t4002.html
6. CRA, Claiming capital cost allowance: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/sole-proprietorships-partnerships/report-business-income-expenses/claiming-capital-cost-allowance.html
7. CRA, When to register for and start charging the GST/HST: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses/when-register-charge.html
8. CRA, Keeping records: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed-income/keeping-records.html