CRA Service Declines: Something Needs to be Done

In this month’s Knowledge Bureau Report poll we are asking you to weigh in with your experience in response to CRA’s May 6 News Release, in which it congratulated itself for “improved service” to taxpayer this tax season. Our readers are in almost complete disagreement so far. The comments below from Amanda Zais, DFA-Tax Services Specialist in Kelowna, B.C. are especially insightful from a busy “feet on the street” professional. Please be sure to give us your opinion before month’s end.

The question: According to CRA, Canadians experience improved service delivery and responsiveness from the CRA this tax season. Do you agree?

Amanda’s comments: Absolutely not! Service delivery & responsiveness has continued to decline, to a level of extremely high concern for Canadian taxpayers.

Calls disconnected frequently, seemingly due to the agent not being interested in the query & more likely due to lack of training/experience, to even begin to understand how to answer. It appears they choose the calls that interest them. Or simply hang up… General inquiries line has turned into no different, than any large corporate call center. You’re very lucky if you get a helpful agent. We hear this same complaint from clients.

Service complaint responses used to be within 30 days & effective up until the late fall, now we are lucky to even receive a response.

Objections are filed more than ever, at a rate of 4-5 a week on average (coming from a few a year before). The largest reason being due to absolutely baffling CRA errors & wrongful adjustments, denying eligible credits/deductions on filing. The reviewing agents seemingly cannot interpret the complexity of the Canadian Income Tax Act. But alas, objections are now taking close to a year to resolve, while taxpayers sit with their money trapped in CRA jail wrongfully. I assume due to the volume they are receiving & can only imagine based on the volume we are submitting in our office alone.

When we submit adjustments to CRA, no matter what method we use, be it online CRA rep change my return, via mail T1adj or Refile, the odds that one or more lines from the request are missed, is roughly 25% of our adjustment requests. Which means spending time creating & sending in another adjustment request to complete the request… sometimes it takes several attempts. The reason we have been given for this is, different departments deal with different lines. Sorry what? A single adjustment, will see the hands of multiple departments? The term “too many cooks” comes to mind.

These issues have caused a trickle effect to the clients as a result, with preparation rates increasing over the years, to simply cover CRA administrative time, that we should never be spending this much time on. Fixing CRA errors has become a full time, year round role for our office. Will they compensate us for our rapidly increasing time spent, fixing their mistakes?

It’s time for CRA to be held accountable as they are putting taxpayers in difficult financial situations regularly, leaving them at their mercy. 

Preparers in the T1 industry are burnt out navigating the increase of admin costs, from dealing with CRA’s inability to do its job accurately. Clients/taxpayers are the ones paying the ultimate price with rising costs to seek help navigating these issues, along with the stress it puts on them. Something needs to be done.

Thank you for these important insights, Amanda. Readers, do you agree or disagree: – have CRA’s services improved this past tax season? Please weigh in with your comments, too!

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