Most of us at Irish medical schools pay somewhere around €60,000 a year in tuition, and most of us also file a Canadian tax return with almost no income on it. Those two facts meet on one form: the TL11A. It is how Canada lets you claim the tuition you pay to a university outside the country, and it is easy to miss because nobody in Ireland is thinking about Canadian tax season.
We aren’t tax professionals and this isn’t tax advice. What follows is what the Canada Revenue Agency’s own pages say, read closely, with the parts we couldn’t confirm marked as such. Everything here was last checked on 20 October 2026. [1][3]
What the Credit Is Worth
The tuition tax credit is a federal non-refundable credit. You report eligible fees on Schedule 11 and the result flows to line 32300 of your return. [1] Non-refundable means it can only reduce tax you owe. It can’t create a refund on its own. [7]
The credit is worth your eligible fees multiplied by the lowest federal tax rate. That rate was cut recently: it is 14.5% for 2025 and 14% for 2026 and later years. [7] At the 2026 rate, every $10,000 of eligible tuition is worth $1,400 off your federal tax. Guide P105 for the 2025 tax year still describes the rate as 15%, so if you see that number, it is the older wording. [1]
The federal education and textbook credits were eliminated in 2017. Only the tuition credit remains, though unused education and textbook amounts from before 2017 can still be claimed. [1]
Who Can Use the TL11A
The TL11A is for students who are still residents of Canada for tax purposes while studying abroad. If your stay is temporary and you have kept significant residential ties, the CRA will generally treat you as a factual resident. [3] Whether that describes you is its own question, and we went through it in Are You Still a Canadian Tax Resident While Studying Abroad?
For tuition paid to a university outside Canada, the CRA lists three conditions, and all of them have to be met: [3]
- You are in full-time attendance at a university outside Canada.
- Each course you claim lasts at least three consecutive weeks and leads to a degree.
- The fees are eligible fees and were paid for the calendar year shown on the form.
A full-time medical degree on campus fits the first two comfortably. The CRA doesn’t count correspondence-style distance courses, and it says you are not in full-time attendance if you carry a minor course load or spend most of your time on things like paid work. [3]
Tuition paid with a scholarship or bursary generally still counts. Tuition reimbursed by your employer or a parent’s employer doesn’t, unless the reimbursement was included in someone’s income. [3]
Is Your Irish School on the CRA’s Lists?
The school has to count as a “university outside Canada”. The CRA keeps two lists that help confirm this: a list of recognized universities in countries outside the US, the UK and the Commonwealth, and a list of universities outside Canada registered as qualified donees. Both lists say they are not all-inclusive. [5][6]
When we checked, University College Cork, University College Dublin and the University of Limerick appeared on the recognized list. [5] The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork and University College Dublin appeared on the qualified donee list, along with the National University of Ireland. [6] We couldn’t find the University of Galway listed under its own name on either list. Since the lists aren’t complete, that doesn’t mean it fails the test, but if you are in Galway, ask the school directly how it handles the TL11A.
What Counts as Eligible Fees
Tuition is the main item. Admission fees and examination fees that are part of the programme also count. Ancillary fees such as health services or athletic fees count only up to $250, unless every full-time student has to pay them. [1]
The CRA lists what doesn’t count, and several of the biggest costs of studying in Ireland are on it: board and lodging, transportation and parking, medical expenses, books, and equipment you keep, with a microscope and a computer as its own examples. [1] Rent and flights home aren’t part of this credit, however large they are.
Two details matter for an Irish academic year.
The form follows the calendar year. Eligible fees are based on the calendar year the course was taken, whatever the academic year and whenever you paid. [1] The school reports January to December, even if Ireland uses a different period for its own purposes. [4] Since an Irish year runs from autumn into spring, one academic year’s fees can end up split across two TL11As.
Euros are fine. The school can enter the fees in euros or in Canadian dollars at the exchange rate when the fees were paid, as long as it labels the currency with its three-letter code. The CRA points to Bank of Canada rates for converting, and says to use the annual average rate if fees were paid throughout the year. [4]
Getting the Form From Your School
You don’t fill in the TL11A yourself. Your university completes and certifies Part 1, then gives it to you. [2][4] If you haven’t received one, the CRA says to contact your school, and to point the school to its page of instructions for educational institutions if they are unsure. [3]
The CRA asks schools to issue the form by the last day of February following the calendar year, so that students can file by the usual 30 April deadline. [4] Schools can use their own customized version if the CRA approves it, so what you get may look slightly different from the PDF on the CRA site. [4] Some schools handle this through a student portal and others through the fees office. We couldn’t confirm each school’s process, so ask yours early.
You don’t send the TL11A with your return. Keep it in case the CRA asks to see it later. [3]
Claiming It on Your Return
Use federal Schedule 11. Fees paid to foreign institutions go on line 7, separately from Canadian fees on line 1. [1] As a factual resident, you use the tax package for the province or territory where you keep your residential ties, usually where you lived before you left. [3]
Provinces handle tuition differently, and you may also need a provincial Schedule S11. [1] Since we are from Ontario, we checked our own province: Ontario discontinued its tuition and education credits in September 2017, and its tuition amount only covers studies before 5 September 2017. [9] For an Ontario resident studying in Ireland now, the credit is federal only. If you are from another province, check its schedule.
File even if you had no income. The CRA says plainly that you can file just to report your tuition, so the unused amount is recorded and carried forward. [3] Your notice of assessment then shows the unused balance carried forward, which is where you will look for it later. [1]
Transfer It or Carry It Forward
You must first use the credit against your own tax for the year, even if someone else paid your fees. [1] After that you have two options for what is left.
Transfer. You can transfer up to $5,000 of the current year’s federal tuition amount, minus what you used yourself, to one person: your spouse or common-law partner, their parent or grandparent, or your own parent or grandparent. [1][3] You designate the transfer in Part 3 of the TL11A. [3] Only the current year’s amount can be transferred.
Carry forward. Whatever you don’t transfer is carried forward. You must claim it in the first year you have income tax to pay, and once an amount is carried forward, it can no longer be transferred to anyone. [1]
For a medical student, the carry-forward can grow large. Six years of Irish tuition adds up to a big balance by the time a resident’s salary starts. Finance Canada has said that large tuition claims and carried-forward amounts are the kind of situation the new top-up tax credit was built for. For the 2025 to 2030 tax years it keeps a 15% rate on non-refundable credit amounts above the first tax bracket threshold, which is $58,523 for 2026. [7][8] Whether it applies to you depends on your numbers in the year you claim.
Whether to transfer $5,000 a year to a parent now or keep everything for your own first years of residency is a real trade-off, and it depends on everyone’s tax rates. An accountant with your family’s numbers can answer it. We can’t.
What We Couldn’t Confirm
We couldn’t confirm how and when each Irish medical school issues the TL11A, or whether any of them do it automatically. We couldn’t find the University of Galway on either CRA list under its own name. We also haven’t looked at how any of this interacts with Irish tax, and we won’t guess. If your situation involves a change in residency, a spouse, or income in Ireland, it is worth paying for advice.
The Bottom Line
If you are a Canadian resident studying medicine full-time at a recognized Irish university, your tuition can count toward the federal tuition tax credit. Your school certifies the fees on Form TL11A, you claim them on Schedule 11, and anything you cannot use is either transferred, up to $5,000 a year, or carried forward to the first year you owe tax.
The steps for this year are short: ask your school for the TL11A, file a return even with no income, and keep the form. For more on paying for the degree in the first place, see what medical school in Ireland actually costs a Canadian. Read Guide P105 yourself before relying on anything here, including this article. Our Resources page lists the sources we trust.
References
- Canada Revenue Agency. (2026, May 6). P105 Students and Income Tax 2025. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/publications/p105/p105-students-income-tax.html
- Canada Revenue Agency. (2025, November 7). TL11A Tuition and Enrolment Certificate – University Outside Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/forms/tl11a.html
- Canada Revenue Agency. (2026). Information for students – educational institutions outside Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/topics/about-your-tax-return/tax-return/completing-a-tax-return/deductions-credits-expenses/line-32300-your-tuition-education-textbook-amounts/recognized-educational-institutions-outside-canada/info-students-educational-institutions-outside-canada.html
- Canada Revenue Agency. (2026). Information for educational institutions outside Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/topics/about-your-tax-return/tax-return/completing-a-tax-return/deductions-credits-expenses/line-32300-your-tuition-education-textbook-amounts/recognized-educational-institutions-outside-canada/info-educational-institutions-outside-canada.html
- Canada Revenue Agency. (2026). Recognized universities and higher educational institutions outside Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/topics/about-your-tax-return/tax-return/completing-a-tax-return/deductions-credits-expenses/line-32300-your-tuition-education-textbook-amounts/recognized-educational-institutions-outside-canada/universities-higher-educational-institutions.html
- Canada Revenue Agency. (2026). List of universities outside Canada registered as qualified donees. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/charities-giving/other-organizations-that-issue-donation-receipts-qualified-donees/other-qualified-donees-listings/list-prescribed-universities-outside-canada.html
- Department of Finance Canada. (2026). Report on the impact of reducing the lowest marginal personal income tax rate on non-refundable tax credits. https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/services/publications/report-impact-reducing-lowest-marginal-personal-income-tax-rate-non-refundable-tax-credits.html
- Canada Revenue Agency. (2026). Line 34990 – Top-up tax credit. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/topics/about-your-tax-return/tax-return/completing-a-tax-return/deductions-credits-expenses/line-34990-top-up-tax-credit.html
- Canada Revenue Agency. (n.d.). Information for residents of Ontario (2017 General Income Tax and Benefit Package, archived). https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/tax-packages-years/archived-general-income-tax-benefit-package-2017/ontario/5006-pc/information-residents-ontario.html