Last updated: October 21 2025
Evelyn Jacks
CRA call centres received more than 10 million calls in the 2024-2025 fiscal year and deflected some 8.6 million of them! Further, responses to general individual-tax questions were accurate only 17% of the time, and wait times for speaking with an agent averaged about 31 minutes - twice as long as a year earlier. These are amongst the findings of the significant shortcomings articulated in the AG's report today. That's all pretty bad. But here's why it's also unacceptable.
The Backdrop. Taxpayers bear the burden of proof, and are responsible for penalties and interest costs when they are late or there are errors or omissions on their tax returns. The penalties are significant and the list is long; here excerpted from Knowledge Bureau’s Evergreen Explanatory Notes, which are provided as a resource to all Knowledge Bureau Students in the Specialized Credentials and CE Summit Programs.
The Tax System is Complex. Help is clearly needed when one third of all Canada’s taxfilers are trying to reach CRA for answers. The wait times are a significant barrier to getting tax filings right. But so is the level of accuracy that is received. Seems like CRA itself is having trouble with the complexity. The Auditor General found:
Was the outcome accurate? Not so much, especially in general inquiries about individual tax filings. Here is what the AG found:
The ideals of a self-assessment system is often discuss in relation to four factors: fairness, equity, simplicity and compliance. Taxfilers can’t comply when the tax system is not simple. Was CRA concerned about accuracy and completeness when taxfilers tried to get help with compliance?
Not according to the evaluation priorities in evaluating their staff. Only 9% of the total performance evaluation score of an agent was based on accuracy and completeness. The AG correctly observes:
“By not prioritizing accuracy and completeness in quality and performance evaluations, the agency placed greater emphasis on meeting resource management targets than providing complete, accurate, and clear information to Canadians.”
The Taxpayer Bill of Rights. The Taxpayer Bill of Rights enshrines certain standards that tax filers have in their relationship with the CRA. That’s very important because it is the foundation of a trusting relationship.
Taxpayers must be able to receive complete, accurate, timely, and understandable information about filing tax returns in their very complex, digital tax system to comply from their tax department. Further, they cannot be expected to wait unreasonable amounts of time in their busy days to try to get connected, only to receive inaccurate or incomplete information or to be deflected!
Here’s what the Bill of Rights says about that:
Unfortunately, this has not been recent experience with the CRA and the AG’s report perhaps is putting the agency on notice on behalf of all tax filers. But, taxpayers also put the complaints to the CRA and in significant numbers. From April 2021 to April 2025 complaints about CRA services increased by 145%, increasing required servicing costs even more! The number of complaints[1] were:
The Bottom Line: The 2025 tax filing deadline (Monday, April 30, 2026) is only six months away. CRA needs to make significant changes to its service levels in that time. And, in the meantime, it should automatically waive penalties and interest costs taxpayers are incurring when there are unreasonable delays or inaccuracies at their end. Further, it’s time to make tax accounting fees tax deductible, so that taxpayers who must pay to access their Taxpayer Rights to get the filings right, on time, at least get some tax relief for that.
What’s your take?
[1] Source: Based on data from the Canada Revenue Agency, from the Auditor General’s Report, October 21, 2025