How the reduction is applied
Employer EI is a multiple of the employee’s EI premium for the same period. Without a reduction, Nmbr uses the CRA’s standard employer rate, which is 1.4 times the employee rate. A reduction replaces the 1.4 multiplier with the lower one the Commission granted. Nothing else in the calculation changes. For a pay stub with $166.00 of employee EI premiums:
The employee pays $166.00 either way, so net pay is the same. Only the employer cost, and the amount remitted to the CRA, change.
The multiplier must be between 1 and 1.4. The business needs written confirmation of its rate from the Commission before you set one. See the EI Premium Reduction Program for eligibility and how to apply.
The tax property
The multiplier is held in theca::ei_premium_reduction Tax Property. Its value is a single number.
The owner must be a remittance account whose account_provider is ca_cra. Any other owner is rejected on owner_id with EI Premium Reduction owner must be CRA account.
Retrieve the template from the Tax Property Templates endpoint to confirm the format and validation:
Request
Applying a reduction
Most businesses have one CRA remittance account, created as part of Tax Agency Configuration. Retrieve it with the Remittance Accounts endpoint, filtered to the business entity. You can set the multiplier when you create the account, or add it later.On a new account
Include the property in thetax_properties array on the Create a Remittance Account request. This array is only accepted on create.
On an existing account
Send the CRA remittance account’s ID asowner_id to the Create a Tax Property endpoint.
effective_from is required. Set it to the first day the confirmed rate applies, which is January 1 for a rate granted for a calendar year.
Which pay stubs use the reduction
Nmbr resolves a CRA remittance account for each work assignment from its remittance account enrollments, using the payroll’spay_date. Work assignments enrolled in the account use that account’s multiplier. A work assignment with no CRA enrollment falls back to the business entity’s CRA account when the business entity has exactly one.
If a business has more than one CRA account and the reduction applies to more than one, create a Tax Property on each account.
Updating the rate
The Commission confirms a reduced rate for a calendar year, so the multiplier changes when a new rate is granted for the following year.allow_concurrent is false for this template, so an account holds one multiplier at a time. To move to a new rate, set effective_to on the current Tax Property to the last day the old rate applies, then create a new one with an effective_from after that date.
A Tax Property cannot be ended before the pay_date of the most recent payroll that used it. The earliest_valid_effective_to attribute on the Tax Property gives you that floor. See Ending a Tax Property for the full rules.
Once a payroll that used the property is approved, is_editable becomes false and only effective_to and note can be changed. Correcting a multiplier after that means ending the property and creating a replacement.
Removing the reduction
Seteffective_to on the Tax Property to the last day the reduced rate applies. Payrolls with a pay_date after that date use the standard 1.4 employer rate again.
Verifying what was applied
Employee and employer EI for a pay stub are in the Statutory Withholding Line Items for the payroll. The employer amount carries the reduction; the employee amount does not. Theei-cpp-balance report has a CRA EI Premium Reduction column holding the multiplier in effect for the account, next to the employee and employer EI totals. For Quebec payrolls, use ei-qpp-qpip-balance.