Time’s Up: CRA’s 100 Day Mandate for Improvement

After years of frustration on the part of tax professionals and taxpayers alike, the Finance Minister ordered the Canada Revenue Agency to clean up its act in 100 days. Specifically, the improvement plan was to run from September 2 through December 11. Finance Minister and Minister of National Revenue, Francoise-Phillippe Champagne instructed CRA to fix “unacceptable wait times and service delays.” Time’s up this week and CRA has released an update on progress. What gets measured, gets done. Let’s see what CRA’s metrics show. 

In the last federal budget, the government proposed to allow Canadian Controlled Private Corporations to claim 100% CCA in the year of acquisition for assets purchased after April 18, 2021, to a maximum of $1,500,000.  However, legislation has yet to be introduced to implement that change.  That’s turning out to be a big problem for tax advisors and their clients.  Here’s why:

Most people know that when you miss filing a tax return your family will miss out on receiving the Canada Child Benefit.  However, did you know that you can retroactively claim the CCB by filing those missed returns?  How far back you can go, however, depends on what type of CCB you file for. 

Small businesses are critical to the health of the Canadian economy.  According to a recent study by the Government of Canada, small businesses (1-99 employees as defined by the Government) represented 97.9% of all enterprises in Canada. According to the same study, these businesses employed 8.4 million individuals in 2019 or 68.8% of the private labour force. In addition, small business contributed 41.9% to the Gross Domestic Product generated by the private sector in 2016.  Now that we are in past-pandemic mode, understanding the needs of small businesses will pay off in better tax and financial planning solutions. 

You may ask yourself, what is the difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance?

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No time to wait for hours on hold with the CRA?  Expand your tax season toolkit with Knowledge Bureau’s suite of immediately implementable tools including EverGreen Explanatory Notes and the Knowledge Bureau Tax Planning Calculators.  These tools are designed to provide you with answers to trigger questions your clients have about tax efficiency and the important financial decisions they need to make.