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. 

Gone are the days when you had to quit work to start receiving your Canada Pension Plan retirement pension. These days you can start receiving you CPP retirement pension at any age from 60 to 70. There is a catch however.

On September 9, the Honourable Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance, announced that the Employment Insurance (EI) premium rate for employees will be frozen at the 2013 level of $1.88 per $100 of insurable earnings for the years 2014-2016.

On September 6, the Honourable Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance, announced that the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report for 2013-2014 ranked Canada’s financial system as the strongest in the world for the sixth consecutive year.

The CRA has new teeth: new Section 237.3, Reportable Transactions, may in fact, give the Canada Revenue Agency (“CRA”) a real advantage if transactions that seek to avoid taxation fall foul of pre-disclosure rules. 

CRA continues to help Canadians use more electronic services.

Filing a tax return is about what you keep. So is the pre-payment of income taxes throughout the year. This month that’s an important concept as the September 15 quarterly tax instalment payment is due on Monday, September 16.