T3010 Schedule 2: How to Report Activities Outside Canada

Schedule 2 asks a deceptively simple question: did your charity carry on activities outside Canada. The complication is that "activities" here means your own activities, carried on directly or through someone acting for you, and it deliberately excludes gifts and grants to other organisations. Charities that fund overseas partners often tick the wrong box, or tick two. This guide covers the trigger, what belongs on each line, and how the schedule relates to the two grant reporting forms.

What triggers Schedule 2?

You must complete Schedule 2 if you answer yes to question C4 at line 2100. That question asks whether you carried on activities outside Canada directly, through employees or volunteers, or by giving funds or other resources to individuals, entities or intermediaries.

Intermediaries include agents, joint venture partners and contractors. The form's exclusion of qualified and non-qualified donees is shorthand for excluding recipients you gifted or granted to, rather than a statement about what an intermediary can be.

The distinction turns on whose activity it is, not on the recipient's status. CG-002 defines an intermediary as an individual or organisation, separate from the charity and not a qualified donee, that acts on the charity's behalf. So the same organisation can be an intermediary in one arrangement and a grantee in another.

A school abroad is the clearest illustration. If you fund the school to carry on its own activity under the grant rules, that is a grant, reported through lines 5045 and Form T1441. If the school carries out your activity and you meet the own-activities framework with direction and control over your resources, it is an intermediary arrangement and belongs on Schedule 2.

What belongs on line 200?

Line 200 is your total expenditure on activities carried on outside Canada during the period, in Canadian dollars, valued at the time of the expenditure. It covers both what you spent directly and what you paid others to carry out those activities.

It expressly excludes qualifying disbursements through gifts to qualified donees and grants to non-qualified donees. Those are reported elsewhere and must not be folded in here.

Currency conversion is the practical difficulty. Value each expenditure at the time it was made rather than converting a full year total at a single rate. Where you hold a foreign currency account, keep the rate used with each transaction.

Two kinds of cost commonly get pulled into line 200 by mistake. Travel for your own staff member visiting a programme abroad belongs there, because the activity is yours. A transfer to a partner that runs its own programme does not, however closely you work with them.

Charities running multi-country programmes should be able to produce this figure by country from the ledger, because the schedule goes on to ask for it.

How do you report arrangements with intermediaries?

Line 210 asks whether any of your financial resources were used outside Canada under an arrangement with another individual or entity, and a yes means completing the table. Contracts, agency agreements and joint ventures all count.

The table asks for the portion of the line 200 total that was transferred to individuals and organisations, together with the countries where the activities were carried out.

Behind the table sits a documentation expectation. Where an intermediary acts for you, CRA recommends a written agreement, and expects evidence of direction and control plus records showing what was done with the funds.

CRA recommends a written agreement but says there is no legal requirement to have one. For a one-time activity involving $5,000 or less, other documentation can sometimes be enough. What CRA weighs is not how well the agreement reads but whether you can show you directed and controlled the use of your resources through an active, ongoing relationship.

That is where most of the real work sits. Guidance CG-002 covers CRA's expectations for Canadian registered charities carrying on activities outside Canada in detail.

What do the remaining lines ask for?

Lines 220 through 260 cover funding source, who did the work, and whether you exported goods. Each is a yes or no with a follow up.

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Question 3 on the schedule asks you to identify, using CRA's country codes, every country where you carried on activities or gave any of your resources.

The code list is fixed and includes residual codes for countries not named individually. Those cover other countries in Africa, Asia and Oceania, Central and South America, Europe, the Middle East and North America.

One narrow exception applies to this schedule. Certain religious organisations that existed on 31 December 1977, have never issued official donation receipts and have never received gifts from a receipting registered charity may be exempt from completing Schedule 2, but only with written confirmation from the Charities Directorate.

Use the residual codes rather than leaving a country off. An incomplete country list is a straightforward filing gap.

How does Schedule 2 relate to the grant reporting forms?

Schedule 2 reports your own activities. Gifts and grants to other organisations are reported on two separate forms, and the expenditure amounts should not overlap. Getting this wrong double counts your international spending.

The amounts stay separate because line 200 expressly excludes qualifying disbursements. The country reporting is different: question 3 asks for every country where you carried on activities or gave any of your resources, so a country can appear there because of a grant even though the grant amount never enters line 200.

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A charity can appear in all three. A Canadian charity might run its own clinic in one country, gift funds to a Canadian charity working in another, and grant funds to a local organisation in a third. Each is reported in its own place.

The reporting distinction follows a real legal distinction about who is carrying on the activity, which in turn determines what documentation you need.

What records support Schedule 2?

Your books and records have to be kept at the Canadian address CRA has on file, in a format accessible to you and to CRA. That rule does not relax because the activity happened overseas.

The requirement is about location and accessibility, not about paper. CRA accepts electronic records, including properly created scanned images of paper documents. What does not satisfy the normal location rule is records maintained outside Canada and merely accessed electronically from here, though CRA has separate guidance covering cloud storage. A charity running a programme abroad still needs its records available at its Canadian address.

The statutory test is location, accessibility and format. It is not about who owns the device or who physically holds the file, so a third party may hold records without that being a problem in itself.

For international programmes, build the file as you go: the arrangement document, transfer records, currency rates used, activity reports from the field, and the country allocation. Reconstructing it at filing time from bank statements is how charities end up estimating.

Ongoing bookkeeping support that tracks foreign programme spending by country and by arrangement makes Schedule 2 a report rather than a project.

Frequently Asked Questions

We send funds to a partner charity overseas. Is that Schedule 2?

Only if the partner is acting as your intermediary on your own activity. If you made a gift or a grant to the organisation, that is reported through line 5050 and Form T1236, or lines 5045 and Form T1441, not on Schedule 2.

Do we need Schedule 2 for a single short overseas trip?

If you carried on charitable activities outside Canada during the period, including through your own employees or volunteers, the question at C4 is answered yes and Schedule 2 applies. There is no minimum expenditure.

What exchange rate should we use?

Value expenditures in Canadian dollars at the time of the expenditure. Keep the rate used with each transaction rather than converting an annual total at a single year end rate.

Our activities cover several countries. How do we report that?

Identify each country using CRA's country codes at question 3, and report the amounts transferred by country in the table at question 2 where an arrangement applies. Use the residual regional codes for countries not listed individually.

Does exporting donated goods count?

Question 7 at line 260 asks specifically about exporting goods outside Canada. If you answer yes, you report the items, their value, the destination city or region, and the country codes.

Can we keep our overseas programme records in the country where we work?

Not as your only copy. Your books and records have to be kept at the Canadian address CRA has on file, in an accessible format. Electronic and properly scanned records are fine; records maintained abroad and merely accessed electronically from Canada do not meet the normal location rule.

Activities outside Canada carry documentation and direction requirements beyond T3010 reporting, set out in CRA Guidance CG-002. This article covers the schedule as at August 2026 and is not a substitute for advice on your specific arrangements.

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