1. Find out if you can get the CDB

To qualify for the Canada Disability Benefit (CDB), you must:

be between 18 and 64 years old
be approved for the disability tax credit
have filed your income taxes for the most recent tax year
be a resident of Canada for income tax purposes

You must also be one of the following:

a Canadian citizen
a
a
a who's lived in Canada for the past 18 months
someone who's registered or could be registered under the Indian Act

You cannot get the CDB if you're serving a prison sentence, except for the first and last month you're in prison.

In most cases, if you have a spouse or a common-law partner, they also must have filed their taxes for the most recent tax year. For example, if you apply for the CDB between July 2025 and June 2026, you and your partner must have filed your 2024 taxes.

Income

Your CDB payment is based on your income from the most recent tax year.

Your CDB payment goes down for every dollar of income you have over a certain amount. If your income is too high, you cannot get the CDB. The chart below shows:

how much income you can have, and
how much your CDB payment for that year goes down for each dollar of income you have over that amount.

You are:	You can have income up to:	Every dollar over that amount, your CDB goes down by:
single	$23,000	20 cents
married or a common-law partner	$32,500	20 cents
married or have a common-law partner who also gets the CDB (their payment goes down the same amount)	$32,500	10 cents

What counts as income

Service Canada does not count everything as income for the CDB.

To figure out your income, Service Canada:

starts with your adjusted family net income, and
takes away any working income you earned up to a certain amount.

Working income is money you earn from:

a job,
being self-employed, or
a scholarship that you must pay taxes on.

If you're single, Service Canada figures out your income for the CDB by taking off up to $10,000 of your working income. But any amount of working income you earn over $10,000 counts as income for the CDB.

Example 1: You're single and have an adjusted family net income of $25,000. And $8,000 of that is working income. Your income for the CDB will be $17,000. This is because:

$25,000 adjusted family net income

– $8,000 working income

= $17,000

If you're married or in a common-law relationship, Service Canada figures out your incomefor the CDB by:

adding your working income and your spouse or partner's working income together,
and taking off up to $14,000 of that working income.

But any amount of working income over $14,000 counts as income for the CDB.

Example 2: You and your partner have an adjusted net family income of $35,000. And $15,000 of that is working income. Your income for the CDB is $21,000. This is because:

$35,000 adjusted net family income

– $14,000 working income

= $21,000

Even though the 2 of you had $15,000 in working income, the most the CDB can subtract is $14,000.