How to Spot a Fake Pay Stub: A Canadian Landlord's Checklist

Of all the documents in a rental application package, pay stubs are the easiest to manipulate and the hardest to verify by eye. A PDF editor can change a salary figure in seconds. The logo, the layout, the employer name — all of it can be preserved perfectly while the single number that matters most is quietly adjusted upward.

The good news: fake pay stubs almost always contain errors that a systematic check will catch. The bad news: most landlords and leasing agents don't know what to check for — especially the Canadian-specific signals that immediately expose a doctored document.

This is the checklist. Work through it for every stub in every application package you review.

1. Run the gross-to-net math

This is the single most reliable check — and almost no one does it. Canadian payroll deductions are not arbitrary. Every pay stub must account for three mandatory deductions before arriving at net pay: Canada Pension Plan (CPP), Employment Insurance (EI), and income tax. If the numbers don't roughly add up, the stub has been altered.

Here's the math for a common Toronto scenario — an employee earning $5,000/month gross:

• CPP (2025 rate: 5.95%):On $5,000/month, after the $291.67 monthly basic exemption, you're looking at approximately $280/month in CPP contributions.
• EI (2025 rate: 1.64%): On $5,000/month, approximately $82/month — subject to the annual maximum of $1,049.
• Federal income tax: At $60,000 annual income, roughly $762/month after the basic personal amount credit.
• Ontario provincial tax: Approximately $282/month at this income level.

Total deductions: approximately $1,406/month. Net pay: approximately $3,594/month.

If a pay stub shows $5,000 gross and $4,600 net — only $400 in deductions — that's not a rounding difference. That's a red flag. Legitimate payroll software calculates these deductions automatically to the cent. A manually edited stub almost always gets this wrong.

You don't need to be precise to the dollar. If the deductions look too small for the gross pay — if the gap between gross and net is less than 20% for a typical salaried employee — ask for an explanation.

2. Check the year-to-date figures for internal consistency

Every Canadian pay stub shows year-to-date (YTD) totals for gross earnings, CPP, EI, and tax. These numbers are cumulative — they increase with every pay period. They give you a built-in cross-check.

If the stub is from the 18th pay period of the year (bi-weekly, early September), YTD gross should be approximately 18 times the period gross. If the YTD gross is lower than that — or dramatically higher — the document has an arithmetic problem. Payroll software never makes this mistake. A person editing a PDF often does.

When you receive three stubs, as you should, the YTD figures should climb consistently from one stub to the next, by the same amount each time for salaried employees. An inconsistent YTD sequence across three stubs is a strong indicator that they were not all generated from the same payroll system.

3. Identify the payroll software — and check if it fits

Legitimate Canadian employers almost never generate pay stubs manually. They use payroll platforms: ADP, Ceridian Dayforce, Payworks, Nethris, Wagepoint, or QuickBooks Payroll. Each of these platforms has a recognisable layout, typography, and information structure that is consistent across all stubs from the same employer.

Look at the stub and ask: does it look like it came from software, or like it was typeset by hand? Telltale signs of a manually created stub include inconsistent font weights, slightly misaligned columns, fields that don't quite match the standard format for the claimed platform, and unusual spacing between line items.

Also consider whether the payroll platform matches the employer. A large corporation with 800 employees doesn't use Wagepoint. A three-person company doesn't use enterprise Ceridian. Implausible software for the claimed employer size is worth a second look.

4. Verify the employer name against government records

Every business that operates in Ontario and runs payroll is registered with the CRA and assigned a Business Number (BN). The Ontario Business Registry (ontario.ca/businessregistry) is publicly searchable at no cost. Enter the employer name and confirm that the company actually exists, that it is in good standing, and that it is the type of business consistent with what the applicant described.

A pay stub listing “Apex Financial Solutions Inc.” as the employer when no such company appears in the Ontario Business Registry is a significant red flag. It doesn't automatically mean fraud — the employer could be federally incorporated or operating under a trade name — but it warrants a phone call to verify.

5. Look for cross-stub consistency

When you have three pay stubs, compare them against each other, not just against your mental model of what a pay stub should look like. Ask:

• Is the employer name identical across all three — exact spelling, capitalisation, and punctuation?
• Is the employee name identical across all three, and does it exactly match the applicant's ID?
• Are the pay period dates sequential and consistent with the claimed pay frequency?
• Do the deduction categories stay the same from stub to stub — same benefit deductions, same union dues if applicable?

Authentic stubs from the same payroll system are nearly identical in structure. When details shift between stubs — a slightly different address, a changed benefit line, an inconsistent departmental code — that inconsistency is a signal.

6. Check the PDF metadata

Every PDF carries metadata that is not visible during a normal review: creation date, modification date, and the software used to generate the document. Legitimate pay stubs are created by payroll software and typically show a creation date close to the pay period end date. A pay stub with a creation date from three months after the period it covers, or a modification date more recent than the creation date, is worth scrutinising.

Metadata is visible in most PDF readers. In Adobe Acrobat or Preview on Mac, go to File → Properties (or Get Info) and look at the document properties. A stub claiming to be from ADP with a “Producer” field showing “Adobe Acrobat” or “Microsoft Word” should immediately raise a question: why was legitimate payroll software output re-exported through a document editor?

What to do when something looks off

If one of these checks flags a problem, don't accuse. Ask. Request the T4 from the most recent tax year — a legitimate employee will have one, and the income figures should be consistent with the stubs. Ask for a direct phone number for the employer's HR or payroll department, then call the company's main line (found independently, not from the applicant) and ask to be transferred.

Most applicants who submit altered documents don't expect anyone to run the math or make the call. The act of asking often produces a resolution — either a satisfactory explanation or a withdrawal of the application.

The limit of manual review

This checklist catches a lot. But it takes 20–30 minutes per stub, requires you to remember the CPP and EI rates for the relevant year, and depends on having three stubs in the first place. When you're reviewing 15 application packages for a single listing, manual math on every stub is not realistic.

Automated document integrity checks — which run these calculations in seconds, cross-check metadata without requiring a separate tool, and flag inconsistencies across all three stubs simultaneously — exist precisely because manual review at scale is impractical. The checklist is what you do when you have time. The automated summary is what you use when you don't.