CRA’s Callback Service for Tax Pros Pilot

Are you a tax professional with years of experience? Have you ever felt frustrated after calling the CRA, having spent hours on hold, wasting your client’s or employer’s time, only to speak to CRA agents who aren’t qualified to answer your questions? The Auditor General of Canada was equally displeased in a scathing report last fall on wait times and accuracy levels at the CRA. Now a new CRA callback service may come to the rescue this tax season. Here is my experience with the pilot project so far:

Birth, marriage, death, separation or divorce, university entrance, sale of business, unemployment, illness, career change, self-employment, inheritances, even certain birthdays — all of these life events can have tax consequences.

Family business succession is the topic at the November Distinguished Advisor Workshop – and it’s an important one – as by the end of this decade it is estimated that over 350,000 business owners will be over the age of 55, and within ten years over half a million business owners will exit their businesses, according to a report in 2013 by CIBC World Markets.  

Very few people have any training to help them be the best Powers of Attorney of they can be. Now advisors and their clients can learn how in a half day session hosted by top lawyers in this field.

SURREY, BC. Knowledge Bureau, a national financial educator and Kwantlen Polytechnic University have partnered to offer essential business skills to new and graduate students in the lower mainland of BC this fall.

Regulatory burdens for businesses are becoming less taxing in Canada, according to a 2014 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which analyzed the ease of paying taxes in 189 countries. 

Should the threshold for making quarterly tax instalments be raised above $3000? Why or why not?