Working While on CPP Disability: Earnings Limits, Volunteering and School

You can do some work, volunteering and school while you receive the CPP disability benefit, but because the benefit is for people who can’t work regularly at any job, what you do can affect whether you still qualify. This page covers the earnings thresholds, the 3-month work trial, volunteering and school, and getting the benefit back if you have to stop. Who qualifies in the first place is covered in the CPP disability benefit guide, part of the Canada Pension Plan hub.

Earnings thresholds

Source: Service Canada, receiving CPP disability benefits.

You must contact Service Canada once you return to work and earn more than $7,400 before tax in the year. If you delay, you may have to repay some of the benefit. The upper figure, the earnings that show you can work at a “substantially gainful occupation”, rises each year. Self-employment counts too: Service Canada looks at the gross earnings of the business and your involvement in its day-to-day activities.

The work trial

If you return to work on a regular basis, you may be able to keep receiving your disability benefit for 3 months. The trial gives you and Service Canada time to evaluate whether you can work regularly. If you are still capable of working after the 3 months, your benefit will likely stop; if your condition means you can’t keep working, it can continue. Service Canada’s example is a person who earned $8,200 during the trial but missed many days because of their condition, and stayed eligible.

Volunteering and school

Most people can keep receiving the benefit while volunteering or at school, but these activities can show an ability to work. You must contact Service Canada if:

• your combined volunteering and school or training is more than 15 hours a week for 4 months or longer, or
• you complete a school, university, trade, technical training or rehabilitation program.

Time at school includes studying, research, writing papers and assignments. You don’t need to tell Service Canada about activities of 15 hours a week or less, or that last less than 4 months.

If you have to stop working again

If your benefit stopped because you worked, volunteered or went to school, and you can’t continue because of the same or a related disability, you may qualify for reinstatement without the usual application process:

• Automatic reinstatement. In Service Canada’s example, benefits restart automatically when the disability recurs within 2 years.
• Fast-track re-application, a quicker way to re-apply.

Service Canada also offers a vocational rehabilitation program (guidance, training and job placement) for people thinking about returning to work.

Other benefits

Provincial disability and social assistance programs have their own rules for other income, including the CPP disability benefit; working while on ODSP covers Ontario. At 65, the disability benefit becomes a CPP retirement pension, which counts as income for the Guaranteed Income Supplement.

At 65

The disability benefit changes to a CPP retirement pension automatically at 65. The months you received the disability benefit are left out of the base part of the pension calculation and credited in the enhanced part (why your CPP may be less than you expected). The retirement pension has no earnings limit.