Long-Term Care Costs in Retirement: Who Pays, and What You Can Claim
What you pay for a care bed is set by your province. What you can claim for it is federal: nursing home fees, care wages, and a parent's costs on line 33199.
Your mother has just moved into a long-term care home, or you're pricing one for yourself, and the monthly bill is bigger than the pension cheque. What you'll pay for that bed is set by your province, and how it's set changes at the border, so the price turns on where you live and what you have coming in. What's the same everywhere is the tax side. Most of what you pay for full-time care in a nursing home counts as a medical expense when you file, and you can claim it for a parent as well as for yourself. The part you can't claim is capped at a few thousand dollars a year, and it's less again on a modest income.
Key takeaways
- Your province sets what you pay for a long-term care bed, and it re-sets the rate every year. Ontario and Alberta charge a flat rate up to a maximum; British Columbia charges you up to 80% of your after-tax income. Your ministry's page is your price list, because the charge is set province by province and no federal page publishes it.
- Your care is a medical expense on your tax return. If you're paying for full-time care in a nursing home, the fee generally counts in full. If it's a retirement home, you claim the wages inside the fee, from nursing and personal care to your meals, your housekeeping and your laundry, and only if the person you're paying for qualifies for the disability tax credit.
- You subtract the lesser of 3% of your net income or $2,834 (for 2025) from what you paid. On a modest retirement income the 3% is the smaller number, so more of your bill counts.
- You can claim a parent's care on line 33199, and the reduction is measured on your parent's income, not yours.
Who sets the price of a care bed
Your province decides what you pay for the bed, under its own law, and that choice is what brings your income into it, or leaves it out. In Ontario you pay a flat co-payment, the same maximum in every home in the province, with a separate program that lowers it if you can't afford it.6 In British Columbia your rate is your income: up to 80% of your after-tax income, with a minimum and a maximum.7 In Alberta you pay a flat accommodation charge up to a maximum the province sets and adjusts for inflation, most recently on 1 August 2026, and your health care inside the home is publicly funded on top of it.8
| Province | What you pay for a room | If you can't afford it |
|---|---|---|
| Ontario | A flat co-payment set by the ministry, the same in every home: from 1 July 2026, $70.00 a day for basic, $84.40 semi-private, $100.01 private. Care is the same whichever room you're in. | The Rate Reduction Program, worked off your net income on line 23600, leaving you a comfort allowance of $149 a month. You re-apply every year, and it covers basic rooms only. |
| British Columbia | Up to 80% of your after-tax income, with a minimum and a maximum. Under $19,500 of after-tax income, your rate is that income less $3,900, divided by 12. At $19,500 or more, it's 80% of it, divided by 12. | The rate is already income-based. If paying it would cause you serious financial hardship, you can ask your health authority for a temporary reduction. |
| Alberta | A flat accommodation charge up to a provincial maximum: from 1 August 2026, $71.85 a day for a shared room and $83.05 for a private one. Your health care in the home is publicly funded. | On the Alberta Seniors Benefit or Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped, the charge can be covered in part or in full, leaving you at least $373 a month to spend on yourself. |
Three provinces, three different answers, and no federal rate sitting behind them: the charge is set province by province, and no federal page publishes what you'll pay. Your number lives on your own province's health ministry site, and the home itself can tell you the current rate and how it'll assess your income. Home care runs the same way, on the same site.
The big round monthly figures that come up when you search for the cost of care usually come from a company selling you care insurance, or from a company that runs care homes, and they're selling you something. Your bill comes from your province's schedule, not from their price list.
A retirement home isn't a long-term care home, and your tax return treats the two differently, which decides how much of your bill you can claim.
Can you claim long-term care costs on your tax return?
Yes. "Attendant care and care in a facility" is a named category of eligible medical expense, and if you're paying for a group home it routes to the same entry.3 The Canada Revenue Agency, which everyone calls the CRA, sorts your claim by where the care happens, and what you can claim depends on that more than on what you paid.2
| Where the care happens | What you can claim | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| A nursing home, full-time care | Generally the whole regular fee: food, the room, nursing, administration and maintenance fees, activities. Not personal extras like the hairdresser. | Your receipts, and either an approved T2201 or a medical practitioner's written note that the person depends on others for their personal needs and care. |
| A retirement home or seniors' residence | The wages inside the fee: care, meals, housekeeping and laundry for your own space, activities, transport, security, and the salon if it's in the monthly fee. Not rent, food, cleaning supplies, or admin, reception, grounds and maintenance wages. | The person you're paying for qualifies for the disability tax credit, or DTC. The home gives you a wage breakdown. |
| Your own home | Your attendant's wages, for the time you're at home and need the help. | Your attendant isn't your spouse and is 18 or older. You qualify for the DTC, or a medical practitioner certifies in writing that you need the care. |
If you're paying for full-time care in a nursing home, the whole regular fee generally counts. Your food, your room, the nursing, the administration and maintenance fees, and the social programming all go in. Your hairdresser doesn't.2 On the tax side, a nursing home is a place that gives full-time care, with nursing around the clock, to people who can't look after themselves, and any facility with those features can count as one.2 The claim needs one of two documents: an approved T2201, the disability tax credit form, or a medical practitioner's written note that the person depends on others for their personal needs and care, now and for the foreseeable future, because of a lack of normal mental capacity.5
In a retirement home you can't claim the whole fee. What you claim is the wages inside it, and that reaches further than nursing: preparing your meals, housekeeping and laundry for your own space, your health care from a nurse or a personal support worker, your activities, driving you, security on a secured unit, and the hairdresser if that sits in the monthly fee.2 It only works if you, or the person you're paying for, qualify for the DTC.2 The home has to hand you a breakdown that shows those wages, and if a subsidy paid some of them, you take the subsidy off first.2 Your rent isn't in it, nor your food, nor cleaning supplies, nor the wages of the people at the front desk, in the office, or keeping the grounds and the building up.2
If the care is in your own home, you claim your attendant's wages, and only for the time you were at home and needed the help. Your attendant can't be your spouse or partner and has to be 18 or older, and either you qualify for the DTC or a medical practitioner has certified in writing that you need the care.2 Someone you hire privately will usually count as your employee, which makes you the employer, with the paperwork that comes with it.2
Whatever the setting, your claim rests on your receipts. A receipt has to show who you paid, and if you paid an individual it has to carry their social insurance number.2 You can only claim the part nobody reimbursed you for.1
How much of the bill actually counts
You don't claim the whole bill. You add up your eligible expenses, then subtract the lesser of 3% of your net income or $2,834 for 2025, and the rest is the amount your credit is worked out on.1 Your net income is line 23600 of your return. The $2,834 is indexed, so it'll move a little each year.1
If you're retired, "the lesser of" works in your favour. On an illustrative net income of $24,000, 3% is $720, and that's all that comes off your claim. With $90,000 of net income you'd lose $2,700. The 3% stays the smaller number until your net income passes about $94,500, and past that you lose the same $2,834 as everyone else.
It's a credit, worked out in the federal tax step of your return, so it lowers the tax you owe rather than lowering your income.1 That matters because line 23600 does other jobs in your retirement, and a care bill can push on it from the other side. If you take extra out of a RRIF, the registered account your RRSP turns into, to cover the home, that withdrawal counts as income, like every RRIF withdrawal, so your net income goes up and 3% of it goes up with it. Your age amount runs off the same line, and it starts shrinking after your net income clears $45,522, reaching nothing at $105,709.4
Two things soften that for you. If you're a couple, either of you can claim the household's medical expenses, and whichever of you has the lower net income often comes out ahead, because 3% of a smaller income is a smaller reduction.1 And you get to pick the window. Your expenses can come from any 12-month period that ends in the tax year, as long as you didn't claim them the year before.1 When your care bill starts partway through a year, you can choose the 12 months that hold the most of it.
Can you claim a parent's nursing home fees?
Yes, on a different line from your own expenses. Line 33099 is for you, your spouse or partner, and your children under 18. Line 33199 is for your other dependants, and that's where your parent goes.1 A dependant, for line 33199, is someone who depended on you for support and is your or your partner's parent, grandparent, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, niece or nephew, and who lived in Canada at some point in the year. Your adult children and grandchildren go on that line too.1
The reduction on line 33199 is measured on your dependant's net income, not on yours, and you do the sum separately for each person you claim for.1 Because it's their income, your reduction is smaller whenever they have less than you do, and a parent in full-time care usually does.
Take an illustrative year. You paid $30,000 for your father's nursing home, and his net income was $24,000. Three per cent of his income is $720, which is less than $2,834, so $29,280 of what you paid counts toward your credit. Had the rule measured it against your own $90,000 instead, you'd have lost $2,700.
If the person in care has the disability tax credit
The disability tax credit comes into this twice. First, some of your care claims hinge on it. The wages inside a retirement home fee, from your care and your meals to your housekeeping and your laundry, count only if the person you're paying for qualifies, and an attendant at home needs either that or a medical practitioner's written note.2
Second, there are special rules for a year in which you claim both the disability amount and attendant care for the same person. If you claim the full-time nursing home fee on the medical line, nobody can claim the disability amount for that person that year, you included. You can claim the disability amount alongside only the wage portion of the nursing home fee, up to $10,000, and the home has to break those wages out for you.5 Working your return both ways shows which comes out ahead.5
How you get approved, what the T2201 asks you and who signs it, is set out in the disability tax credit guide.
The other medical bills in a retirement year
Care's the big one, but your retirement year has smaller bills in it, and most of them are on the same list.3 Your hearing aids count, with their batteries and repairs. Your dental work counts unless it's purely cosmetic, and dentures need no prescription at all. Your prescription drugs count when a pharmacist recorded them, and over-the-counter medicine doesn't. The premiums you pay for a private health plan count as long as 90% or more of the premiums under that plan are for eligible medical expenses. Your travel to get medical care counts once you're going at least 40 km one way, and only if the same care wasn't available closer to home.3
A hearing aid on its own may not get past your reduction. The same hearing aid, a crown and four months of care in one 12-month window usually does, which is why the window you choose matters. Your care bill also lands inside the yearly spending number your retirement income plan runs on, and it belongs in there at your province's rate rather than at a guess.
So what do you actually get to decide?
Most of this isn't a choice. Your parent's care goes on line 33199 and nowhere else, and the reduction there is measured on their income. What you do get to decide comes down to three things.
Which of you claims. If you're a couple, the household's medical expenses can sit on either return, and the claim usually goes on the lower-income one, because 3% of a smaller income is a smaller reduction.1
Which 12 months. The window is yours to pick, so a bill that started in the autumn can be claimed with the months that follow it rather than split across two returns.1
The full fee, or the disability amount. Where the DTC is in the picture, you claim the whole nursing home fee or you claim the disability amount with the wage portion, and you can't have both for the same person in the same year, so your return is worth working both ways before you choose.5
Common questions
Is a retirement home tax deductible in Canada?
Not your whole fee. What you claim is the wages inside it, the people who give you care, cook your meals, clean your room and do your laundry, and you can only claim them if you've been approved for the disability tax credit. Your home has to give you a breakdown of those wages, and your rent and your food aren't in it.
Can I claim my mother's nursing home fees on my taxes?
Yes, on line 33199, if she depended on you for support and lived in Canada at some point in the year. Your reduction is 3% of her net income or $2,834, whichever is less, and it's her income that sets it, not yours.
What is the medical expense threshold for 2025?
The lesser of 3% of your net income on line 23600 or $2,834. On a net income of $40,000 that's $1,200, and everything you paid past that counts toward your credit. The dollar figure is indexed, so it moves a little each year.
Do I need receipts for attendant care?
Yes. A receipt has to show who you paid, and if you paid a person rather than a company it'll need to include their social insurance number. For a retirement home you also need the home's breakdown of what went to care wages.
How much does a long-term care bed cost in Canada?
It depends on your province, because the charge is set province by province and there's no federal page that publishes it. Ontario and Alberta set a flat maximum a day; British Columbia charges you up to 80% of your after-tax income. Your own province's health ministry site carries your rate, and the home can tell you how your income gets assessed.
Can I claim care costs that started last year?
You can pick any 12-month window that ends in your tax year, as long as you haven't already claimed those expenses. So if your bill started in September, you can put it in the same window as the months that follow it, instead of splitting it across two of your returns.
Sources
- CRALines 33099 and 33199 – Eligible medical expenses you can claim on your tax return. The lesser-of-3%-or-$2,834 reduction, who each line covers, the 12-month window, and the lower-income-spouse tip. Accessed 2026-09-04.
- CRAAttendant care and care in a facility. What counts in a nursing home, a retirement home and at home, the receipt and breakdown rules, and the special rules with the disability amount. Accessed 2026-09-04.
- CRADetails of medical expenses. The eligible-expense list, including attendant care and care in a facility, hearing aids, dental services, dentures, prescription drugs, private health plan premiums and travel. Accessed 2026-09-04.
- CRALine 30100 – Age amount. $9,028 at net income of $45,522 or less, nil at $105,709, for 2025. Accessed 2026-09-04.
- CRARC4065 Medical Expenses 2025, the chart on claiming attendant care and the disability amount together: the certification needed for full-time nursing home fees, and the $10,000 limit on wages claimed alongside the disability amount. Accessed 2026-09-04.
- OntarioPaying for long-term care. The maximum co-payment fees effective 1 July 2026, and the Long-Term Care Rate Reduction Program, its net-income basis and the $149 comfort allowance. Accessed 2026-09-04.
- Province of British ColumbiaLong-Term Care Services. The client rate of up to 80% of after-tax income, the two formulas either side of $19,500, and the minimum and maximum monthly rates. Accessed 2026-09-04.
- Government of AlbertaContinuing care – Resident accommodation charges. The maximum daily accommodation charges effective 1 August 2026, what the charge covers, and the $373 monthly disposable income assured to Alberta Seniors Benefit and AISH recipients. Accessed 2026-09-04.
Educational, not financial advice. Figures verified against primary sources on the date shown.
See it in a story: "Counting What's Already There," where Joanne adds up what a year of retirement really costs. For the credit itself, see the disability tax credit guide, or browse the whole retirement hub.