When parents separate, child support is often the first financial question that comes up, and it is also one of the most misunderstood. Many people assume it is a simple matter of looking up a number in a chart. For salaried employees with a single T4, it often is. But once you add special expenses, fluctuating income, or self-employment into the mix, the calculation becomes far more involved, and getting it wrong can cost a family thousands of dollars a year in either direction.
This article explains how child support in Ontario is determined under the Federal Child Support Guidelines, what section 7 expenses are and how they are shared, how income is calculated for child support purposes, and how courts approach income for self-employed payors, including when income can be imputed and which business expenses survive scrutiny under Schedule III of the Child Support Guidelines.
How Much Child Support in Ontario Do I Pay? The Table Amount
The Federal Child Support Guidelines include a set of charts called the Federal Child Support Tables. There is a separate table for each province and territory, and each table sets out a basic monthly amount of child support, commonly called the table amount. The amount depends on three things: the paying parent’s annual income, the number of children, and the province where the paying parent lives. The Federal Child Support Tables were updated effective October 1, 2025, to reflect current tax rules, so amounts payable from that date onward should be calculated using the new tables. You can find the base amount for your situation using the Government of Canada’s official 2025 Child Support Table Look-up.
The table amount is meant to cover the ordinary costs of raising a child, such as food, clothing, shelter, and everyday activities. It is presumptive. In most cases where the children live primarily with one parent, the other parent pays the table amount, full stop. Courts depart from the tables only in limited situations, such as shared parenting time arrangements where each parent has the children at least 40 percent of the time, situations of undue hardship, or where the payor earns over $150,000 and the strict table amount may be inappropriate.
One point deserves to be stated plainly because it comes up constantly. The fact that the parent receiving child support also receives the Canada Child Benefit or other child tax benefits does not reduce or eliminate the paying parent’s child support obligation. Government benefits are treated as the government’s contribution to children. They are separate from, and do not offset, the support a parent owes under the Guidelines.
What Are Section 7 Expenses?
Section 7 of the Child Support Guidelines deals with special or extraordinary expenses. These are costs that go beyond the day-to-day expenses the table amount is designed to cover. Common examples of section 7 expenses include:
- Child care expenses, such as daycare, before and after school care, or a nanny (not family members, friends or a neighbour)
- Medical and dental insurance premiums attributable to the child
- Health-related expenses that exceed insurance reimbursement by at least $100 per year, such as orthodontics, counselling, prescription glasses, hearing aids, or speech therapy
- Extraordinary expenses for primary or secondary school programs, such as tutoring or private school tuition
- Post-secondary education expenses, including tuition, books, and residence
- Extraordinary extracurricular activities, such as competitive sports or advanced music programs
An important qualifier applies to child care expenses. Under section 7(1)(a) of the Guidelines, child care expenses only qualify if they are incurred as a result of the custodial parent’s employment, illness, disability, or education or training for employment. Daycare costs incurred so a working parent can attend their job will typically qualify. Child care incurred for convenience or personal time generally will not.
Not every activity qualifies as extraordinary either. Soccer registration for a house league team is usually an ordinary expense covered by the table amount. Elite rep Soccer with travel tournaments and thousands of dollars in fees may qualify, depending on the family’s income and spending patterns. The test asks whether the expense is necessary in relation to the child’s best interests and reasonable in relation to the means of the parents and the family’s spending pattern before separation.
How Are Section 7 Expenses Shared?
Section 7 expenses are shared proportionately to each parent’s income, not equally. If one parent earns $100,000 and the other earns $50,000, the higher earner pays two thirds of eligible section 7 expenses and the lower earner pays one third. The calculation also accounts for any tax deductions, credits, or subsidies available for the expense, such as the child care deduction. What gets shared is the net cost, not the sticker price.
How Is Income Calculated for Child Support Purposes?
For most employees, income for child support purposes starts with line 15000 of the income tax return, which is total income before deductions. But the Guidelines do not simply accept the tax return at face value. Section 17 allows a court to look at the pattern of income over the last three years where income fluctuates, and to use an average or the most recent figure, whichever fairly reflects what the payor is actually capable of earning. A payor who received a large one-time bonus, or who had an unusually bad year, may see their Guideline income adjusted accordingly.
Schedule III of the Guidelines then makes a series of adjustments to the line 15000 figure. Some of the more common ones include deducting union dues and certain employment expenses permitted under the Income Tax Act, replacing taxable capital gains with actual capital gains, and replacing the grossed-up amount of dividends from Canadian corporations with the actual dividends received. The goal throughout is to arrive at a number that reflects real money available to the parent, not the artificial figures that tax law sometimes produces.
Child Support for Self-Employed Parents: Reasonable Business Expenses Under Schedule III
Self-employment income is where child support calculations most often break down. A self-employed parent reports net business income, meaning revenue minus expenses. The problem is that expenses which are perfectly legitimate for tax purposes are not always legitimate for child support purposes. The Canada Revenue Agency and the family court are asking different questions. The CRA asks whether an expense was incurred to earn income. The family court asks whether the expense reduced the money genuinely available to support a child.
Schedule III addresses this directly. Section 9 of Schedule III provides that where a parent earns income from self-employment or a partnership, only those business expenses that are reasonable in the circumstances may be deducted. Section 10 adds back salaries, wages, management fees, or other payments made to persons with whom the parent does not deal at arm’s length, such as a spouse or family member, unless the parent can establish that the payments were necessary to earn the income and were reasonable in amount.
In practice, the expenses that attract the most scrutiny are the ones with a personal benefit component. Vehicle expenses where the car is also the family car. Home office deductions covering a portion of rent, utilities, and internet the parent would pay anyway. Cell phone plans. Meals and entertainment. Travel that blends business with personal time. Capital cost allowance, which is a paper deduction rather than actual money leaving the parent’s pocket, is also frequently added back, particularly for real property. None of these deductions is automatically disallowed, but the parent claiming them bears the burden of showing they are reasonable, and courts routinely add back some percentage of them when calculating Guideline income.
Imputing Income Under Section 19: The Drygala Test
Where the financial disclosure does not tell the full story, section 19 of the Guidelines allows a court to impute income, meaning the court attributes an income figure to a parent that is higher than what appears on their tax return. Income can be imputed where a parent is intentionally underemployed or unemployed, has diverted income, earns income that is exempt from tax or taxed at lower rates, has failed to provide income information when legally required to do so, or, critically for business owners, unreasonably deducts expenses from income. Section 19(2) states expressly that the reasonableness of an expense deduction is not solely governed by whether the deduction is permitted under the Income Tax Act.
The leading Ontario authority on imputing income for intentional underemployment is the Court of Appeal’s decision in Drygala v. Pauli, 2002 CanLII 41868 (ON CA). Drygala sets out a three-part test. First, is the parent intentionally underemployed or unemployed? Second, if so, is the underemployment or unemployment required by the needs of a child or by the parent’s reasonable educational or health needs? Third, if not, what income is appropriately imputed in the circumstances? Importantly, Drygala confirmed that there is no requirement of bad faith or a deliberate attempt to evade support. A parent who simply chooses to earn less than they are capable of earning, without a valid reason, can have income imputed to them. Parents have an obligation to earn to their capacity.
For payors who operate through a corporation, section 18 of the Guidelines gives the court a further tool. If the parent is a shareholder, director, or officer of a corporation and their personal income does not fairly reflect the money available for support, the court can include all or part of the corporation’s pre-tax income, or an amount equal to what the corporation could reasonably have paid the parent. A business owner cannot shelter income from child support simply by leaving it in the company, unless there is a legitimate business reason for retaining those earnings, such as financing equipment, managing debt, or maintaining a reasonable working capital reserve.
The practical takeaway for self-employed parents is that full, organized financial disclosure is not optional. Financial statements, corporate tax returns, general ledgers, and a clear explanation of any expense with a personal element will be expected. Courts draw adverse inferences against parents who disclose reluctantly or incompletely, and an adverse inference usually means a higher imputed income.
Getting Child Support Right the First Time
Child support in Ontario is not an area where guesswork serves anyone. An underestimated income figure shortchanges the child. An inflated one creates arrears, enforcement problems through the Family Responsibility Office, and years of conflict. Whether you are the parent paying support or the parent receiving it, understanding how the table amount, section 7 expenses, and income calculation rules fit together is essential to reaching a fair and durable arrangement.
At Chronicle Law P.C., we regularly assist parents across Mississauga, Toronto, and the Greater Toronto Area with child support matters, including complex income determinations involving self-employment and corporate income. If you have questions about your child support obligations or entitlements, contact us at info@chroniclelaw.com or 289-270-9996 to schedule a consultation. Services are available in English and Urdu.