“The tax agency treats Canadians unfairly. It forces people to pay immediately, but makes them wait months for answers and makes them pay to fix the agency's own mistakes. I want the government to tell us how long people must wait for answers, and who pays when the agency makes an error.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am rising to follow up on a question I asked during question period about the performance of the Canada Revenue Agency. As I pointed out in my question, the CRA shows no quarter to average Canadians while it regularly fails at its own metrics or even pays out millions of dollars to fraudsters. Most Canadians have a dim view of the CRA. At least, that is my experience. On the one hand, it is understandable; nobody likes the tax man. On the other hand, it does a pretty bad job sometimes, so some criticism is warranted. I want to share two stories, and hopefully the parliamentary secretary will listen to them and perhaps give some answers. The first is from a resident in my riding, Carolyn. She was recently approved for a CPP disability credit. This required that she refile taxes going back several years. She did that, and she consistently followed up and looked at the status. It consistently told her the adjustment request was received, but there was no more information. She called in, time after time. Eventually, she got to a CRA agent who told her she would just have to wait a bit longer, perhaps a couple more months. It could even be eight months, she was told, and if no one was assigned to her file, then she would have to file a complaint. How long should she have to wait to get a resolution? In the meantime, while she was waiting to get a decision there, the CRA reassessed her on another issue and said that she owed the government money. Like any good taxpayer, she paid when she had to, because the CRA shows no quarter to average Canadians. She had to pay on time or face the consequences. On the other hand, the CRA can wait for months and give taxpayers, residents, no answers on their issues. How long should she wait for a response? The second example is from Justin, an accountant in my riding who was helping businesses during a sale of some assets. Several companies were involved. The CRA, unfortunately, made a mistake. The CRA capitalized some expenses incurred during the sale rather than expensing them. I am not an accountant. I am not an expert here, so I am going to take him at his word on this. Assuming the CRA did make this mistake, Justin estimated it would take 18 months and thousands of dollars to file the necessary objections to get the CRA to correct its very own obvious mistake. My question to the parliamentary secretary, who I hope can provide some clarity here on the CRA’s insufficient behaviour, is this. How long should residents have to wait for responses from the CRA, and who should pay when the CRA makes a mistake and costs taxpayers money?”

“The tax agency is not getting better. Complaints about it went up 27% last year, reaching a three-year high. Will the government set up automatic tax filing for people with simple taxes?”

“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague’s acknowledgement and his sympathies for my residents, but respectfully, I would request better performance from the CRA rather than sympathy. He has tried to paint a picture of actions that the government is taking to try to make things better or get better, but respectfully, the data does not back that up. Just this year, after the 100-day service improvement plan, which ended in December, the Office of the Taxpayers’ Ombudsperson’s annual report in June showed that the problem remains. It was the most complaints they had received in three years. They are up 27% from last year. The ombudsperson said that the complexity of the tax system is one of the biggest problems, and I see that all the time. They made one recommendation that the CRA itself could not accept. It was to expand automatic tax filing to taxpayers who are in simple tax situations. Will the government do that?”