Summary of the Corporate Business Plan 2017-2018 to 2019-2020

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Compliance

The CRA aims to make it easier for taxpayers who want to comply with Canada's tax laws and more difficult for those who choose not to comply. By selecting the right intervention for the risk, we ensure taxpayers are supported in the most effective way for compliance. We use the least intrusive and most efficient approach to encourage taxpayers to comply with their tax obligations, while reserving enforcement interventions for those who do not intend to comply.

In recent years, the CRA's significant actions to deter, detect, and correct non-compliance have included: increasing focus on high-risk segments of the population; reinforcing strategic partnerships with key countries and organizations; developing business intelligence tools to maximize the use of available data; and enhancing risk-assessment capacity. We intend to build on the successes of these initiatives.

Image description

There are 6 squares in this image and each square describes terms associated with Compliance efforts in the CRA.

The first square
Business Inteligence

the second square
International Co-operation

the third square
Improving Comliance

the fourth square
Tax evasion and aggressive tax planning

the fifth square
Filing Integrity

The sixth square
Collections

Business intelligence

The CRA's innovative use of research, analytics, and data mining plays an important role in our ongoing long-term compliance efforts. The Agency's business intelligence encompasses both big data to enhance predictive analytics (how we detect non-compliance) and behavioural economics to strengthen compliance. The application of advanced analytics allows for improved decision making and enhances the CRA's tactical and strategic business processes. The nature of our business environment means we are constantly developing innovative, flexible, and strategic approaches to support our activities in research, analytics, and data mining.

The CRA currently invests a great deal in its business intelligence infrastructure, and an additional $28 million has been earmarked to develop an even more robust infrastructure at the Agency over the next few years. This long-term investment will help the CRA to renew its business intelligence computing platform, tools, and processes to further strengthen our business intelligence foundation. The renewed business intelligence environment will improve the Agency's advanced research, trend analysis, and compliance-risk analysis. Adjustments to the platform, together with a research-and-development approach in a lab environment will allow experimentation and learning, while producing exceedingly faster outcomes. We will also implement a plan to meet the evolving need for CRA employees to use data for risk assessment and business development.

Research

In our ongoing effort to determine the most appropriate and effective intervention for a particular compliance risk, the CRA will conduct behavioural research and launch pilot projects to assess the impact of new or modified compliance treatments. We plan to further refine the use of behavioural economics and to develop experimental designs for projects to assess the impact of different treatments on similar groups of taxpayers. This research will, in turn, assist in the development of predictive models, which will allow the CRA to better focus resources to target material non-compliance with the most appropriate interventions, while maximizing outreach to taxpayers through education and assisted compliance treatments.

Protecting Canada's revenue base and the fairness of our tax system includes understanding and addressing the tax gap. Broadly defined, the tax gap is the difference between the tax payable if all obligations were fully met in all instances, and the tax actually paid and collected. The CRA will continue to study the tax gap, collaborating with international counterparts, other organizations, academics, and other experts. Building on the two tax gap papers published in 2016, the CRA will publish a series of papers on other aspects of the tax gap.

Image description

This image shows the Reserach continuum associated with the CRA's efforts to identyify and study the Tax Gap issue.
This mage reads left to right and shows the actions planned in 2017 to 2018, and 2018 to 2019 and 2019-2020.

Under each of the years noted in the horizontal graph, there is text describing the planned activities.

Under the 2017 to 2018 period. In all cases the information reads left to right and is meant to show activities undertaken earlier or later in the fiscal year. There are no months shown in the diagram, simply a horizontal view with arrows pointing downwards to each acivity.

Analyze electronic fund transfers to and from high risk jurisdictions
Accumulate date from completed goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) research audits and analyze data
Complete the review of forensics of informatics functions to enhance the CRA's ability to process digital evidence
Tax gap papers (ongoing)
Study dynamics in Community Volunteer Income Tax Program

Under the 2018 to 2019 period
Establish performance measures of risk assessment criteria for GST/HST models
Determine and apply appropriate risk-based treatments for particular off-shore transactions
Increase Business Intelligence and technical capacities to identify wealthy individuals, tax scheme promoters, and tax evasion

Under the 2019 to 2020
Test GST/HST risk assessment criteria
Determine and apply appropriate risk-based treatments for particular offshore transactions

Risk assessment

The CRA assesses many types of risk to deter, detect, and address non-compliance. Our compliance risk-assessment methods are constantly evolving and improving. In addition to its own data, the CRA receives a wide variety of information from international parties to use for risk assessment. In the planning period, the Agency will seek additional sources of information and refine data-mining and risk-assessment models related, among others, to GST/HST registrants, employer accounts, third-party data, underground economic activity, and high-risk taxpayers.

By expanding capabilities in predictive analytics, the CRA will deliver more results Canadians expect, such as detecting and deterring tax avoidance and maximizing tax recovered. We will extend the scope of our business intelligence solutions by adopting big-data technologies to include more semi-structured and unstructured data.

Image description

This image shows the Risk assessment continuum associated with the CRA's efforts to leverage business intelligence and data to improve compliance.

This mage reads left to right and shows the actions planned in 2017 to 2018, and 2018 to 2019 and 2019-2020.

Under each of the years noted in the horizontal graph, there is text describing the planned activities.

In all cases the information reads left to right and is meant to show activities undertaken earlier or later in the fiscal year. There are no months shown in the diagram, simply a horizontal view with arrows pointing downwards to each acivity.

Under the 2017 to 2018 period.

Update and modify risk assessment models and profiles. Integrate applied intelligence solution to aggressive goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) planning
Identify risks among GST/HST registrants
Develop data mining models to support enhanced risk assessment of employer accounts
Gather information about non-compliance to inform risk-based strategies related to underground economic activity
Seek additional sources of third party data for risk assessment systems
Identify high-risk taxpayers using electronic fund transfer data

Under the 2018 to 2019 period

Automate entity management system to build on existing large business automated risk-assessment system
Integrate applied intelligence solution in GST/HST audit programs, model additional algorithms for aggressive GST/HST planning
Expand electronic filing for foreign reporting requirements
Automate matching electronic transfer data with existing CRA taxpayer data
Enhance tools to leverage contry by country reports and common reporting standards data

Under the 2019 to 2020 period

Fully implement applied intelligence solutions for GST/HST registrants
Develop additional algorithms to detect "carousel schemes" and significant non-compliance within the large business and multi-national enterprise populations and among wealthy individuals.

Outcomes analysis

The CRA analyzes the results of its research, risk assessment, and predictive analytics to assess their effectiveness and to inform future decisions. The CRA's strategic, systems-based approach increases the efficiency and effectiveness of our compliance programs by concentrating our resources over the long term on addressing non-compliance with the greatest materiality. This protects Canada's revenue base and the fairness of the tax system.

Planning highlights

The CRA will continue to use business intelligence to:

• develop innovative, flexible, and strategic approaches to support research, analytics, and data mining
• identify and target high-risk industry and population sectors
• enhance forensic and informatics capabilities for criminal investigationsexamine the international tax gap, focusing especially on offshore compliance issues, to assist the CRA in estimating the international tax gap overall
• inform outreach activities by analyzing results of previous efforts
• meet the evolving need for CRA employees to use data for risk assessment and business development
• apply behavioural economics through the use of outreach strategies and reinforcement messaging (e.g., letter campaigns, automated messages), allowing the CRA to continue to influence taxpayer attitudes and improve voluntary compliance
• implement a modernized workload management system for most collection and compliance workloads that will provide a suite of enhanced system capabilities that will be more sustainable and efficient, and provide the flexibility to accommodate shifting business needs

Expected results

Planned business intelligence improvements support the CRA's efforts to prevent the issuing of unwarranted goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) refund and rebate claims and to address willful non-compliance and aggressive GST/HST schemes.

The acquisition of tools and technological expertise needed for complex investigations and audits will increase the exposure of sophisticated and well-organized schemes. The CRA anticipates updated risk-detection technology will:

• enhance our identification and risk assessment of high net worth individuals and large corporations to detect and correct non-compliance
• increase capacity to redirect current resources to compliance-enforcement activities, ensuring the most effective intervention to protect the tax base and the integrity of Canada's tax system
• increase understanding of complex networks deliberately designed to avoid paying tax
• ensure taxpayers have access to accurate information to assist them in meeting their tax obligations
• foster innovation in the technology platform and the business intelligence infrastructure enabling the Agency to continue to improve its programs and services, thus making it easier for individuals and businesses to interact with the CRA

The CRA's tax gap papers will provide more in-depth analysis of the methodological and practical considerations associated with tax gap estimation, and will further enhance our understanding of how this information could assist in administering Canada's tax system.

International co-operation

In support of our strategy to address international tax risks, the CRA continues to play a leadership role in collaborating with the growing global network of tax administrations and international bodies working together to fight international tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance and to build capacity among developing country tax administrations.

A key element of the global tax evasion and tax avoidance strategy includes enhanced transparency. To this end, the CRA is preparing for the implementation of the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) to facilitate the automatic exchange of information. In June 2015, the CRA signed a multilateral administrative arrangement to prepare for effective, secure, and timely exchanges under the CRS. More than 100 jurisdictions, including Canada, are committed to implement the CRS with the first exchanges of information occurring in 2017 or 2018. The CRA is scheduled to begin information exchanges with respect to accounts held in 2017 by September 2018. Work is ongoing at the CRA to prepare for, and benefit from, the first exchanges of CRS information.

To further enhance transparency, Budget 2016 investments will allow Canada to also implement country-by-country (CbC) reporting, one of the recommendations of the OECD/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) action plan. The objective of CbC reporting is to increase transparency on the global operations of certain multinational enterprises. CbC reporting includes information on these multinational enterprises' global allocation of income, economic activity, and tax paid. CbC Reports will be filed in the jurisdiction of tax residence of the ultimate parent entity of the multinational entity group, then shared between jurisdictions through automatic exchange of information pursuant to government-to-government agreements. The CRA will implement CbC reporting standards for improved transfer-pricing documentation in 2017.

In addition, the CRA Commissioner will continue to play a leadership role at the international level through his participation in the OECD Forum on Tax Administration (FTA). The FTA is a forum through which tax administrators from 46 countries can identify, discuss, and influence relevant global trends and develop new ideas to enhance tax administration around the world. FTA Commissioners have acknowledged that the new measures to enhance transparency will better position tax administrations to combat tax evasion and tax avoidance, in part, by encouraging greater voluntary compliance.

Key elements of the FTA work over this planning period include supporting the OECD/G20 international tax agenda (including BEPS implementation), strengthening global efforts to tackle cross border tax avoidance and evasion, and enhancing core tax administration (service and compliance) functions.

In this context, the CRA will continue to participate in the Joint International Taskforce on Shared Intelligence and Collaboration (JITSIC). Under the auspices of the FTA, JITSIC-participating countries operate under a legal framework of bilateral and multilateral conventions and tax information exchange agreements to share experience, resources, and expertise to tackle common tax evasion and avoidance issues.

Furthermore, as a member of the FTA Bureau, the CRA Commissioner will lead efforts designed to support the international tax agenda, namely through his sponsorship of the Large Business and International Programme and Capacity Building Network.

In addition to continuing to build tax administration capacity in developing countries bilaterally and multilaterally, the Agency will also further the development of a global on-line Knowledge Sharing Platform. This Platform will connect tax officials and experts from advanced and less-advanced administrations to share practical information and tools on all aspects of tax administration.

Planning highlights

To foster international co-operation for detecting non-compliance, the CRA will:

• implement the automatic exchange of information with international partners as part of the OECD's Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project
• build tax administration capacity in developing countries
• enhance operational collaboration among tax administrations
• engage with other tax administrations to identify trends, develop strategies, set benchmarks, share best practices, and develop future initiatives related to debt management

Expected results

• Increased compliance from multinational and large corporations
• The CRA will develop systems, policies, and procedures, and recommend legislative changes, leading to a set of common rules between countries, tighter international rules, enhanced exchange of information, and improved dispute resolution
• Beginning in 2017, the CRA will receive certain required information from Canadian financial institutions regarding accounts held by non-residents
• The implementation of the Common Reporting Standard will allow for a first exchange of information in 2018. The confidentiality of exchanged information will be protected by the CRA with the inclusion of safeguards to ensure the information is used only by tax authorities and only for tax purposes
• Under CbCR, specified multinational enterprises will be required to provide tax administrations with information on revenues, profits, taxes accrued and paid, and some activity indicators

Improving compliance

The CRA's compliance activities seek to protect the integrity of Canada's self-assessment system by identifying and addressing those who do not accurately report income. Our compliance interventions follow an escalating approach, from influencing compliance to enforcing it. We seek to positively influence compliance attitudes by increasing taxpayers' understanding of their tax obligations through targeted outreach activities, client service, social marketing, communications, and education. To protect Canada's revenue base, we also conduct examinations, audits, and investigations at the domestic and international levels to ensure compliance with Canada's tax laws.

During the planning period, in addition to efforts to combat the underground economy, the CRA will focus on enhanced compliance measures related to tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance, filing integrity in high-risk sectors, and increasing the collection of tax debts. This focus over the planning cycle will increase the CRA's ability to find those who evade or aggressively avoid taxes and ensure they pay their fair share of tax.

Tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance

Tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance by individuals and businesses cost governments and taxpayers, reducing the fairness and integrity of the tax system. Detecting and addressing tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance is a Government of Canada priority. Significant investments from Budget 2016 will allow it to hire additional auditors and specialists, increase verification activities, and improve the quality of investigative work targeting non-compliance risks both domestically and internationally. The CRA plans to implement strategies addressing aggressive tax avoidance and tax evasion among large and multinational businesses and wealthy individuals, particularly those operating offshore.

The CRA is committed to combatting the abusive use of offshore jurisdictions and protecting the integrity of the Canadian tax system. International tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance are complex global issues. Information from the Offshore Tax Informant Program, international electronic funds transfers, and exchanges with treaty partners help the Agency detect offshore non-compliance. Enhancements to our teams and tools will improve our analysis of relevant information and identification of Canadians who may have used accounts to hide or conceal money offshore. We will undertake projects to ensure full coverage of the segment of the population engaging in offshore transactions. This is a shift to a more concentrated risk assessment of this entire taxpayer segment.

Large businesses

Approximately 1,200 corporate groups make up the large business population in Canada. These groups include parent companies and their subsidiaries, which can make up a total of 25,000 to 26,000 legal entities. Over the next three years, the CRA will increase our capacity to conduct audits and reassessments within the large business sector. The Agency will allocate resources to various regions based on the compliance risks identified through our preliminary analysis. Over five years, the CRA will create 16 new large business audit teams to detect and correct non-compliance among the largest and most complex taxfilers, to ensure profits are not shifted offshore and Canada receives any taxes owed.

Multinational enterprises

The CRA will also add new tax professionals to our already robust team to assist in auditing high-risk multinational corporations and unravelling complex international and aggressive tax avoidance transactions. Technical experts, including lawyers, accountants, valuation specialists, economists, and industry sector specialists, will be deployed to strengthen technical expertise and provide assistance to auditors when required. All intelligence gathered and assessing positions developed by these teams will be fed back into the CRA's risk-assessing systems to inform future plans. The CRA recognizes the importance of tax certainty for large business competitiveness and for overall economic growth. Through the adoption of more industry and sector approaches to audit combined with the additional technical capacity for our senior auditors, the Agency aims to increase its commercial awareness and enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of audit actions for large business.

Wealthy individuals

Some wealthy individuals and related parties use private corporations or complex schemes to inappropriately reduce or defer tax. This includes involvement in complex offshore structures and transactions. The CRA is expanding the scope of the wealthy population segment and its related party initiative through new risk assessment strategies and additional audit teams.

Aggressive GST/HST planning

There are 3.5 million GST/HST registrants in Canada. The CRA receives two million refund and rebate claims totalling about $60 billion annually. Some of these claims are false, and some people knowingly and aggressively avoid paying GST/HST. The CRA will deploy additional audit resources to prevent the issuance of unwarranted GST/HST refund and rebate claims and to address willful non-compliance and aggressive GST/HST schemes.

Tax scheme promoters

Promoters, acting individually or through a network of sales agents, market and sell schemes which, ultimately, contravene Canadian tax law and, unfortunately, result in taxpayers losing money. Budget 2016 provided funding to the CRA to allow the Agency to increase its audit efforts on promoters of tax schemes. To protect individuals and the tax base, the CRA plans to enhance a Promoter Centre of Expertise and deploy additional specialized audit teams to detect abusive tax schemes earlier, effectively addressing the supply of these arrangements before they are widely sold.

The CRA has the authority to apply third-party penalties against tax preparers, promoters, and other third parties who make misrepresentations about tax matters, which could result in other persons making false statements or omissions on their tax returns. The CRA is committed to conducting fair and impartial reviews and strictly controlling the application of penalties.

Meanwhile, the provision of legal counsel specifically dedicated to offer advice at the investigation stage of tax evasion cases will enhance the quality of promoter cases referred for prosecution. To maintain the integrity of the tax system, deter intentional non-compliance, and warn Canadians of potential fraud schemes, the CRA will publicize successful prosecutions and investigation actions more widely. Publicizing the consequences of engaging and promoting these schemes underscores the fact tax evasion and fraud are criminal offences and offenders will be pursued and prosecuted.

Underground economy

Individuals or businesses deliberately under‐reporting or failing to report income or sales to avoid paying taxes undermine the fairness and integrity of the tax system and the competitiveness of law‐abiding businesses. The CRA is committed to reducing the social acceptability of, and participation in, the underground economy. During the planning period, our specialist teams will enhance their focus on those who do not file their returns. These teams will also conduct comprehensive audits of businesses using software to hide sales, as well as audits of businesses in high-risk sectors.

Planning highlights

To improve compliance and address tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance, the CRA will:

• expand technical capacity, risk assessment, audit, and assessment of large businesses, multinational enterprises, and wealthy individuals
• coordinate industry and sector approaches to large business audit to enhance commercial awareness and audit efficiency, resulting in increased tax certainty for taxpayers and the Government of Canada
• deploy more resources to address aggressive GST/HST planning
• take additional steps to address underground economic activity, including audits of businesses using software to hide sales
• implement a national eDiscovery process, using a suite of tools to enhance our forensic and informatics capabilities, and assist legal and investigative teams with the review and analysis of high volumes of electronic evidentiary documents to expose sophisticated and well-organized schemes

Expected results

• Overall, and as a result of Budget 2016's compliance investments, the CRA estimates its planned measures to target aggressive tax avoidance and tax evasion will generate new, incremental revenue of $2.6 billion over the next five fiscal years
• New large-business audits are expected to generate $500
• Audits of wealthy individuals over the next five years are expected to generate $432 million of federal revenue
• With more specialists, the CRA will be better positioned to identify potential loopholes in current legislation, which may be exploited to inappropriately avoid or willfully evade tax. The Agency will identify these issues to the Minister of Finance. Any resulting legislative remedy will further limit potential leakage in tax revenue
• With more focus on promoters, wealthy individuals, and those moving money from offshore, the CRA expects to apply more penalties against those abusing the tax system and make more timely referrals for criminal investigations when appropriate
• The CRA will continue to benefit from international partnerships through enhanced information sharing. Compliance actions will be current, advanced and used as a model for effectiveness
• An enhanced focus on those in the underground economy who do not file tax returns is expected to generate over $100 million in additional revenue
• The CRA will begin to report on the compliance impact of audit interventions for small and medium enterprises in 2018-2019
• Our national eDiscovery process will deliver consistent and timely eDisclosure appropriate to today's complex legal and digital environment

Filing integrity

To fully comply with Canada's tax laws, taxpayers must file their returns on time, pay their tax debts on time and, when required, register to collect GST/HST or other levies and remit amounts deducted at source to the CRA. Over the planning period, the CRA will extend certain enhanced compliance initiatives to enforce registration and complete validations and reviews of withholding, remitting, reporting, and filing obligations for individuals and businesses.

Individual reporting

During the off-season of the Individual Income Tax (T1) Program, the CRA will address new instances of non-compliance and promote ongoing voluntary compliance by increasing our focus on the early detection of unwarranted refunds. This will permit us to identify more individual non-compliance trends and concerted non-compliance tactics. It will also better protect those who are vulnerable within the tax-filing population. We will do more assessment reviews, conduct screening, issue contact letters, and process responses, assessments, and reassessments. Where warranted, cases of suspected tax evasion will be investigated and referred for prosecution.

Business reporting

To target known or suspected non-compliance, the CRA will increase our verification activities to strategically review corporate (T2) and GST/HST returns. Matching information across CRA business lines ensures we identify the highest risk returns. These reviews are aimed at improving compliance with reporting obligations, increasing corporation assessing and GST/HST post-assessing, enhancing federal reporting to the provinces and territories, and increasing taxpayer awareness of how to properly report deductions and credits.

SR&ED claims

The Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) Program is the largest single source of federal government support for industrial research and development in Canada. The CRA is committed to administering the program with fiscal integrity. Accordingly, the CRA will implement a number of initiatives to further enhance consistency in the treatment of claims and ensure a robust claim-review process.

Disclosures and tips

We encourage taxpayers who have not filed or reported, or who realize their previous tax filings are inaccurate, to voluntarily disclose this to the CRA. Those who do not voluntarily disclose non-compliance may be subject to audit or investigation, which can result in significant penalties, fines, or imprisonment. As approximately 80% of voluntary disclosures are filed on behalf of taxpayers by third-party authorized representatives, the CRA plans to promote the electronic filing of disclosures to the tax professional community, making it easier for the taxpayers they represent to put their tax affairs in order.

The CRA also encourages the public to come forward and provide information leading us to detect a violation of tax legislation. Leads can be communicated to the CRA by phone, mail, fax, in person, and electronically. They can be submitted anonymously and are all confidential. In the planning period, the CRA plans to modernize how it screens and assesses leads information.

Planning highlights

To enhance filing integrity and deliver on Budget 2016 commitments, the CRA will:

• review an estimated additional 16,000 non-filer accounts in 2017
• review an estimated additional 28,000 small/medium T2 corporation returns for accuracy and compliance in 2017
• conduct additional verification activities on over 32,500 business accounts in 2017 (verifying over 180,000 accounts in the next five years)

Expected results

• Enhanced registration enforcement, validations, and reviews of withholding, remitting, reporting and filing obligations are expected to generate $279.5 million of federal revenue in 2020-2021
• Increased scrutiny of income tax and benefit returns is expected to generate $143 million in federal revenue over five years
• Enhanced business reporting review is expected to generate $302.9 million of federal revenue over five years

Collections

The success of the CRA's work in combatting aggressive tax avoidance, the underground economy, and tax evasion, together with the growth of Canada's tax base, has contributed to tax debt growth.The CRA will manage tax-debt growth by further developing services for taxpayers who want to resolve their debt, enhancing our strategies to better assess risk, and assigning cases for the intervention most appropriate to the risk. We will also increase resources to address cases which have been risk-scored and not resolved after automated collection efforts. A portion of these resources will focus on debts raised through our reporting-compliance actions on underground economy, aggressive international tax avoidance, offshore, and tax evasion files.The Agency will complement these efforts by encouraging earlier payment of outstanding tax liabilities and working with those who cannot pay the full amount when it is due.

The CRA Service Renewal initiative is one of the largest transformations to the way we structure and deliver our collections and verification program activities in many years. More specifically, the CRA is evolving its program delivery footprint in the regions to meet the challenges and opportunities for taxpayer compliance and service delivery over the coming years. This evolution will set the course for us to adapt to rising service expectations, advances in technology, demographic changes, and globalization. An initiative such as this one also recognizes the ongoing government inspired goal to be even more efficient and productive with the investment being made in us.

Planning highlights

To increase the capacity to collect tax debts, the CRA will:

• enhance collections activities by hiring more people to more effectively address intake levels and the high inventory of tax-debt files, better assist taxpayers who want to pay, and take appropriate collection action against those who do not pay the tax they owe
• hire more people for specialized teams to collect on debts raised through reporting compliance initiatives, such as those targeting aggressive tax avoidance, offshore non-compliance, and the underground economy
• modernize tax centres, call centres and establish National Verification and Collections Centres (NVCCs) to enhance our client-focused services
• as part of the enhanced service agenda, CRA will implement an enhanced problem resolution model to resolve urgent, complex and sensitive taxpayer issues

Expected results

• The CRA's increased capacity to collect outstanding tax debts will lead to the collection of an additional $7.4 billion in tax debt over five years, and $1.65 billion ongoing
• The Agency anticipates stabilizing the growth of the tax debt over the next five years
• Improve our compliance, collections, and verification capacity, and ultimately ensure the ongoing sustainability of our presence in all regions of the country

Tax

Budgetary financial (in dollars)
Human resources (full-time equivalents)

Image description

This image depicts two columns that provide the budgetary financial (in dollars) and human resources (full-time equivalents) numbers that are forecast for the CRA's tax programs over the 2017 to 2020 planning period. The column on the left, under the image of a dollar sign, provides the following information from top to bottom:

Planned 2017-18 (^{Footnote 1})
2,737,078,407

Planned 2018-19 (^{Footnote 1})
2,748,402,606

Planned 2019-20 (^{Footnote 1})
2,755,219,080

Main Estimates 2017-18
2,737,078,407

The column on the right, under the image of an abstract representation of a person, provides the following information from top to bottom:

Planned FTEs 2017-18 (^{Footnote 2})
30,104

Planned FTEs 2018-19 (^{Footnote 2})
29,934

Planned FTEs 2019-20 (^{Footnote 2})
30,109

Footnotes

Footnote 1

Planned spending refers to those amounts for which a Treasury Board submission approval has been received no later than February 1, 2017. This cut–off date differs from the Main Estimates process. In any given year planned spending may include amounts incremental to planned expenditure levels presented in the Main Estimates, however, this year it does not.

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Footnote 2

Planned FTEs (full-time equivalents) represents the hours worked by one employee on a full-time basis. Since the CRA employs persons on both a full-time and part-time basis, the number of persons employed by the Agency is not equal to the number of FTEs utilized; the number of actual persons employed will always be higher.

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Tax

Planned results

Image description

This image depicts three columns that provide information on the CRA's planned results under the Agency's tax programs. There is also a fourth column on the far left of the page which provides the following statement summarising the goals of the CRA's tax administration: Canadians comply with tax obligations, non-compliance is addressed, and Canadians have access to appropriate mechanisms for resolving disputes.

Reading from left to right, the three planned results columns are titled, respectively, Indicator, Target, and Actual Result.

Reading from left to right, top to bottom, the three columns provide the following information below each title:

Percentage of filers who have filed a tax return by their due date (by March 31, 2018) (^{Footnote 1}) 90% 2013-14: 92%
2014-15: 93%
2015-16: 94%

Percentage of known businesses registered for GST/HST (by March 31, 2018) 90% 2013-14: 94.5%
2014-15: 94.6%
2015-16: 94%

Percentage of reported taxes (including instalments) and source deductions that are 90% 2013-14: 90.4%
paid on time (by March 31, 2018) 2014-15: 89.9%
2015-16: 89.9%

Percentage of external service standards targets that are met or mostly met (by March 31, 2018) 90% 2013-14: 92%
2014-15: 94.1%
2015-16: 91.5

Public Perception Index: score compared to baseline (by March 31, 2018) Maintain or increase N/A (^{Footnote 2})

Percentage of total volume of improved correspondence (i.e. changes to structure, design,language 90% N/A (^{Footnote 2})
and format) (by March 31, 2018)

Percentage of services available online (by March 31, 2018) 77% N/A (^{Footnote 2})

Number of Community Volunteer Income Tax Program returns completed (by March 31, 2018) 800,000 2013-14: 606,128
2014-15: 633,468
2015-16: 749,963

Complete an online consultation open to charities and the public (by March 31, 2018) March 2018 N/A (^{Footnote 2})

Incremental revenue resulting from Budget 2016 investments (by March 31, 2021) 2.6B over 5 years N/A (^{Footnote 2})

Incremental debt collected (resolved) resulting from Budget 2016 investments (by March 31, 2021) 7.4B over 5 years N/A (^{Footnote 2})

Footnotes

Footnote 1

Note the methodology for determining the results for this indicator has recently been revised and therefore the 2016-2017 calculations will not be directly comparable with past figures.

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Footnote 2

This is a new indicator and results were not reported on previously.

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Date modified:

2017-03-10