Service to Canadians

The CCRA is the single largest government service provider in Canada. We interact with over 29 million individuals, businesses, trusts, and organizations. This year, we collected more than $313 billion in taxes and duties; and issued almost $11.9 billion in tax free-benefit payments and credits to low and moderate income Canadians and processed approximately $441 million under the Disability Tax Credit. To be efficient, we rely on a high level of voluntary compliance, which we believe is best achieved by providing high quality services supported, when necessary, by responsible enforcement. The vast majority of Canadians understand the importance of meeting their tax obligations—tax dollars are crucial to sustaining Canada's economic and social programs. Consequently, we emphasize innovation and improvement in client service to inform taxpayers of their obligations and to provide efficient, client-focused ways of meeting them. This is balanced with a strong compliance program to detect, deter, and correct non-compliance.

Last year, our service agenda centred on further increasing accessibility and improving programs and services. By tailoring information and services to the needs of individual or particular groups of clients, we strove to increase public confidence in the integrity and responsiveness of our programs and services. As part of the Government On-Line initiative, we enhanced a number of electronic service options, such as My Account, the first of many steps to provide Canadians with an online view of their tax information and account history. Expanding our range of user-friendly electronic services has improved the efficiency and effectiveness of our interaction with Canadians. We also designed new services that will come on line in the near future.

Our efforts continue to pay off. In 2003-2004, tax-related Web hits increased 73% over last year and 48% of T1 individual returns were filed electronically. Although business take-up rates for our electronic services have increased, overall awareness and use of these services for businesses is low. We are developing a strategy to increase business use of electronic filing and payment options. In recognition that electronic solutions are not for everyone, the accessibility rate of our other service channels, such as general and business telephone services, were on target 1 , with high levels achieved during the peak tax-filing season. We also improved the accessibility of our GST/HST credit enquiries service.

Timeliness and accuracy of service delivery is just as important as its accessibility and responsiveness. Our published service standards show our clients the service they should expect in normal circumstances. Last year, we met or mostly met the majority of these service standards, including key timeliness standards for tax and GST returns. We exceeded our benefits payments processing standard, issuing on time over 99% of the benefit payments administered on behalf of the federal, provincial, and territorial governments. Three new service standards were introduced in 2003-2004. (See Schedule E).

We have made substantial gains towards operational accessibility standards over the past few years for telephone service and are proceeding to formalize them. We are also addressing areas where we have not met our expectations. For example, we have now identified ways to improve the timeliness of issuing statements to corporations and performance should improve in 2004-2005.

Providing high quality service and responsible compliance initiatives also means being fair and impartial with our clients, particularly when they disagree with a decision we have taken. A balance must be struck between the interests of the client and our obligation to uphold of the integrity of the tax administration system. Our balanced approach has been successful. Over 95% of the appeals of our decisions relating to income tax and GST/HST are resolved administratively. Further, the courts upheld the CCRA's original determinations in almost two-thirds of the cases they reviewed. Our monitoring of the administration of the CCRA Fairness provisions has confirmed that the policy and procedures are being applied consistently across Canada.

We continued working with our federal and provincial partners to provide programs and services on their behalf, to reduce overlap in government services, and to provide streamlined service at a lower cost to Canadians. New programs, arrangements, and agreements in 2003-2004 include launching the new Child Disability Benefit, and adding five provincial partners to the income verification data exchange, which made it easier for their residents to receive benefits under programs such as Pharmacare. We also drafted agreements to collect the First Nations Goods and Services Tax on behalf of eight Yukon First Nations starting in 2004-2005.

During the past year, we played a leadership role with other federal departments in developing a new client-focused vision of service delivery for Canadians. We collaborated with Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) and Social Development Canada (SDC) to examine service delivery options that have the potential to improve social benefits delivery to Canadians in the coming years, at a lower cost. More significant results for service transformation will be realized in 2004-2005.

1 In 2003-2004, due to other funding priorities, the targets were adjusted from 90%-95% for general and business enquiries to 80%-85% and 85%-90% respectively.

Date modified:

2004-10-28