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Program: Taxpayer and Business Assistance

Subprogram descriptions

Taxpayer Services – Enquiries and Information Products

An essential part of the CRA's commitment to service excellence is providing clear, timely, and accurate information to make it easier for taxpayers to comply with their tax obligations and receive their benefits. We continuously update and improve our information services so taxpayers can get the information they need, when and how they need it.

The Agency's commitment to continuously improving information services matches the Government of Canada's information and service priorities, including those being spearheaded by Shared Services Canada to transform the federal government's information technology infrastructure. These priorities are to provide modern, reliable, and secure services with reduced operating costs; to improve service to Canadians; and to increase security of information. The CRA is working closely with Shared Services to institute this transformation and, as part of the process, is improving services for taxpayers delivered on the web, by telephone, and through social media.

Web renewal

The Web Renewal Initiative is a government-wide project to develop Canada.caⁱⁱⁱ, a single, user-centric website for the Government of Canada. The Privy Council Office and the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat lead the project. All federal institutions are participating in the migration and, by December 31, 2016, approximately 1,500 individual websites will have moved to Canada.caⁱⁱⁱ. The CRA is participating in working groups and is playing a lead role, including helping to develop the governance and publishing models, user-experience testing, information architecture, and technical requirements for Canada.caⁱⁱⁱ.

Since creating the "Taxes" landing page in December 2013, the Agency has:

• created eight new topic landing pages (June 2014)
• completed the upgrade of its website to the Treasury Board Secretariat Web Experience Toolkit (WET) 4.0 standard, in preparation for its migration to Canada.caⁱⁱⁱ (July 2014)
• added the institutional profile and the first service initiation page (December 2014)
• completed Phase 1 of a review of the CRA's most-visited Web content to improve its quality and to identify what should be deleted or archived (January 2015)
• adopted the latest WET standard (4.0.9) on the CRA website (February 2015)
• updated the template and adjusted the institutional profile (March 2015)
• created and updated topics pages to lay the groundwork for future releases (June 2015)

Contact centre transformation

In 2014-2015, the CRA experienced a significant increase in call volumes thereby affecting caller accessibility targets. Various events contributed to the increase in calls, including the extension of the filing season, federal tax benefit changes, new hours of service, changes to the Ontario Trillium benefit, and the new online mail service.

The contact centre transformation initiative now underway in cooperation with Shared Services Canada will improve our capacity to respond to high volumes of telephone enquiries. The CRA was identified as a priority partner for this initiative because of the scale and importance of our contact centre activities and the size and complexity of our telephony infrastructure. The Agency fully supports modernizing call centres across all government departments and agencies to expand beyond voice-based services. We have already taken several steps in this direction, partly in response to consultations with taxpayers on reducing red tape.

These steps include streamlining our business interactive voice response system to make it easier for callers to connect with an agent; encouraging people to use Smartlinks to contact a CRA agent via our website for more information or help with navigating through the website; requiring telephone service agents to give callers their agent ID to increase accountability; and, in some cases, allowing telephone service agents to transfer a credit within a business's account upon request.

Over the long term, the contact centre transformation will enhance telephone services for taxpayers by giving the CRA access to new and improved functions. In April 2014, the CRA established a project team to oversee and coordinate the migration of the existing 79 CRA contact centres, a large undertaking involving every region and most branches.

Social media

The CRA's Twitter following has grown year by year, reaching over 57,000 in 2014-2015. We use Twitter as another way to share the content on our website regarding the programs and services we provide. It also allows us to interact with stakeholders. For example, we used social media tools to engage with small businesses during our red tape reduction consultations in fall 2014. In addition, the CRA developed a number of Web-based videos, including a three-part series to assist and educate taxpayers who might be undergoing an audit.

Other services

The CRA continues to build partnerships with community organizations to deliver its Community Volunteer Income Tax Program (CVITP), and worked with more than 2,000 organizations in 2014-2015. New initiatives included releasing two Web videos, CVITP: Need a Hand and CVITP: Lend a Hand; developing CVITP posters in nine languages other than English and French; launching a Web portal to enable organizations and volunteers to register online; and giving better training and support for first-time community organizations who want to host a clinic.

Key results

• We received over 157 million visits to our website.
• Over 20 million forms and publications were downloaded.
• We issued 996 tweets in 2014-2015 which were retweeted 5,027 times.
• We posted 47 new videos between April 2014 and March 2015. The 94 videos on our channels were viewed 1,908,727 times.
• We answered 17.1 million enquiries and 6.4 million benefits calls through agents and automated services.

Registered Plans

Registered plans are an important financial tool for many Canadians who are looking to secure income for the future, particularly for their retirement years. The CRA is responsible for registering and monitoring plans and for approving the deductibility of employer contributions to defined benefit pension plans. The most recent data from Statistics Canada indicates the Registered Plans program oversees more than $2.83 trillion in private pension plan assets. It also oversees $65.9 billion in tax-free savings accounts, $35.9 billion in registered education savings plans, and almost $1 billion in registered disability savings plan grants, bonds, and contributions.

In 2014-2015, the Agency better supported plan administrators and their financial intermediaries by working with partner stakeholders to harmonize filing dates for pooled registered pension plans (PRPPs) annual information returns to reduce the burden on plan administrators. Updates to CRA's IT systems were made to improve the ability to capture and use data associated with registered plans, and enable the Agency to better assess compliance risk. The IT upgrades include auto-populating certain data fields for more efficient compliance analysis and capturing the data from annual information returns for PRPPs.

Key results

• We reviewed 81% of the applications to register pension plans within 180 days.
• We approved 81% of requests for eligible contributions within 270 days.
• We conducted 861 audits of registered plans.

Policy, Rulings, and Interpretations

The CRA plays an essential role in making sure Canadian taxpayers, businesses, and third parties have access to up-to-date, accurate, technical information and support. This is critically important when dealing with changes to laws affecting reporting requirements.

One of the most far-reaching and complex changes in 2014-2015 was the implementation of an agreement between the governments of Canada and the United States to improve international tax compliance through better reporting of financial account information (FATCA). Beginning in 2015, Canadian financial institutions have to give the CRA information of account holders who are United States citizens or residents. To assist financial institutions and respect privacy laws, the CRA became the intermediary, receiving the information and relaying it to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rather than having Canadian financial institutions report directly to the IRS.

During 2014-2015, the CRA completed a number of significant steps in implementing this agreement. Key steps included making sure financial institutions had all of the information they need to meet their reporting obligations, putting in place the information return financial institutions will use, and setting up the IT systems needed to allow the electronic exchange of information with the IRS.

Because it is important to give taxpayers information so they understand their tax obligations, the CRA provides technical publications and issues rulings. Taxpayers, tax professionals, industry associations, and staff who need access to technical tax information all widely use the technical publications. They can help clarify tax matters, prevent errors and, in some cases, eliminate the need for new rulings or interpretations.

Several of the legislative amendments made in 2014-2015, such as the non-refundable family tax cut credit, prompted updates to the Agency's technical publications.

Key results

• We provided 3,007 GST/HST rulings and interpretations.
• We provided 2,696 income tax technical interpretations.
• We provided 155 advance income tax rulings.
• We completed 44,028 CPP/EI rulings, issuing 92% within target timeframes.
• We responded to 90,108 GST/HST technical telephone enquiries.

Charities

The federal government's 2014 budget earmarked $23 million for the CRA to modernize its IT systems over the next five years, allowing it to provide new digital services to charities. In 2014-2015, the Agency undertook a planning exercise which included identifying high-level business requirements, conducting a feasibility study, developing a project plan, developing an implementation strategy, and staffing. The three main deliverables for this project are:

• creating a system for capturing the data from the registered charity annual return and displaying it on the website. It must also capture data from the application form and display the public portion once an organization is registered.
• improving reporting capabilities so we can better use the data in support of compliance activities, strategic planning, and policy development. This will also help external stakeholders such as academics and media who rely on information reported on charity information returns.
• implementing electronic data capture by allowing registered charities to file their annual return and associated financial statements electronically. Organizations will also be able to apply for charitable registration electronically.

Modernizing the CRA's IT systems for charities will benefit both the charitable sector and the public. It will reduce the administrative burden on charities by giving them more ways to file, which should then make it easier for them to meet their obligations. It will also give the public more complete and accurate information on charities, allowing donors to make better-informed decisions on which charities to support.

Key results

• We processed 84,508 registered charity information returns.
• We audited 781 charities.

Performance measurement

Table Notes

1. Planned spending excludes severance payments, parental benefits, vacation credits, the one-time transition payment for implementing the pay-in-arrears model, and the carry-forward of unused funds from 2013-2014 under the CRA's two-year spending authority. This funding is received during the fiscal year and is included only in actual spending.

2. Modified cash basis, based on Parliamentary appropriations used. See Parliamentary appropriations for an explanation of how actual spending relates to results in the CRA Financial Statements – Agency Activities.

3. Decrease primarily due to lower than planned statutory payments related to the Canada/US softwood lumber agreement.

4. Details on our service standards are in Appendix B.

5. Volume of written enquiries increased, and training requirements diverted resources from answering enquiries.

6. The target was not met in 2014-2015 due primarily to the extension of the filing season, the new hours of service, and various initiatives which significantly increased calls and average call length.

7. An increase in the volume of calls and the need to train additional resources led to lower results.

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