PGP Income Requirements 2025: LICO+30% Tables and Family Size Calculator

Income failure is the most common reason a sponsor loses a PGP lottery win. Not because their income is too low — but because they counted their family size wrong and ended up short of a threshold they didn't realize applied to them.

The Minimum Necessary Income (MNI) for sponsoring parents and grandparents is LICO plus 30% for three consecutive tax years. What makes it complicated isn't the math — it's the definition of "family."

The Three-Year Assessment Window

For the 2025 intake, IRCC assessed the tax years 2022, 2023, and 2024. A sponsor had to meet the threshold in all three years. Falling short in any single year — even with strong income in the other two — results in application return.

The primary evidence document is the Notice of Assessment (NOA) from the Canada Revenue Agency for each relevant year. IRCC can also pull tax data directly if you provide your Social Insurance Number on form IMM 5768, which reduces transcription errors and is the preferred approach.

The LICO+30% Thresholds by Family Size

Note: For 2022, IRCC applied LICO without the 30% buffer as a COVID-era accommodation. The thresholds shown in the table above are current as published. Verify against the official IRCC help center for the latest figures if applying in a future cycle.

How to Calculate Your Family Size: The Part That Catches People

Family size is not just your current household. You count:

1. Yourself
2. Your spouse or common-law partner (for each year they were your partner)
3. All dependent children, for each year they were dependents
4. Anyone you previously sponsored who is still within their undertaking period — even if they no longer live with you
5. The parents or grandparents you intend to sponsor in this application

This creates several edge cases:

Previous sponsorships: If you sponsored a sibling's refugee case five years ago under a 10-year undertaking, that sibling still counts toward your family size today even though they're entirely independent. The undertaking hasn't expired.

New children: A child born in 2023 is not in your family size for the 2022 tax year but is for 2023 and 2024. This can cause the threshold to jump in the middle of your three-year assessment window.

Co-signing spouse: If your spouse co-signs the application to help meet the income threshold, they must be included in the family size calculation for all three assessment years (not just the years you were together). This raises the threshold slightly but adds their income to offset it.

Divorced or separated sponsors: If you no longer have a spouse or partner, they are only included in the family size for the years when the relationship was legally active.

Sponsoring both parents at once: When you sponsor two parents, both are included in the family size count, raising the threshold by one full tier.

Working Through an Example

A sponsor with a spouse and two children (family of four) wants to sponsor both parents (adding two more people). Family size for MNI purposes: 6.

The 2024 threshold for a family of 6 is $90,784. That means the sponsor (or sponsor plus co-signing spouse) needed to have earned at least $90,784 in each of 2024, 2023, and 2022 — with appropriate adjustments in each year for the threshold applicable to that year's family size.

If one of those children was born in 2023, the family size in 2022 was 5 (threshold $72,935 that year) and jumped to 6 in 2023 (threshold $85,020). A sponsor who was on track at size-5 might fall short at size-6 if their income didn't grow proportionally.

What Counts as Income

For PGP purposes, qualifying income is the total income line on your Canadian tax return (line 15000 for federal returns). This includes:

• Employment income (T4 slips)
• Self-employment net income
• Rental income
• Investment income
• EI benefits
• Pension income
• RRSP withdrawals (counted as income when withdrawn)

It does not include non-taxable income sources like the GST/HST credit, the Canada Child Benefit, or provincial assistance payments.

A co-signing spouse's income is added to the sponsor's income for the years they are included in the calculation. The combined total must meet the threshold for the applicable family size in each year.

What Happens If You're Short One Year

If you received an invitation to apply and realize your income falls below the threshold for one of the three years, your options are limited. You can:

1. Review the family size calculation again — a miscount may be the actual problem
2. Check whether a co-signing spouse who wasn't originally included could be added (this raises the threshold but also adds income)
3. Submit with a Letter of Explanation if there's a legitimate reason for the shortfall that IRCC's guidance acknowledges

There is no appeal mechanism for income shortfall. Applications returned for not meeting MNI must wait for a new invitation. If you received your invitation through the 2025 cycle and the PGP is paused for 2026, a failed submission may mean waiting years for another opportunity.

This is why preparation before receiving an invitation matters so much. The Canada Parent/Grandparent Sponsorship Guide includes a family size worksheet and income verification checklist designed to identify calculation errors before they reach IRCC.

The Bottom Line

Meet LICO+30% across all three assessed tax years with the correct family size, and income is not a barrier. Get the family size wrong — which is easy to do with previous undertakings or mid-year life changes — and a lottery win turns into an application return. Calculate your family size carefully for each individual year, verify your NOAs are available and accurate, and consider co-signing only after working through the threshold math in both directions.

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