Our 2005-2006 Results

Our Program Activities

Client Assistance (PA1)

Within the Client Assistance program activity, we are responsible for assisting taxpayers, businesses, and registrants in meeting their obligations under our self-assessment system. We undertake this work through several Call Centres and 46 Tax Services Offices across Canada. As noted on , when our efforts are successful, taxpayers, businesses, and registrants are provided with the tools, assistance, and information they need to comply with their tax obligations.

In 2005-2006, spending for this program activity totalled $332 million (3,998 FTEs) or 8.9% of the CRA's overall expenditures. ¹ Of this $332 million, $233.6 million was for net program expenditures and $98.4 million was allocated to this program activity for Corporate Services.

Figure 9 Resource Spending

• Client Services – provides information, tools and assistance to individuals and businesses on federal and provincial legislation:
  • spending of $162.8 million (2,314 FTEs);
  • more than 15.75 million public enquiries handled; and
  • almost 30 million tax-related visits to the CRA Web site.
• Rulings and Interpretations – provides binding advance income tax rulings to businesses on proposed transactions and non-binding interpretations to businesses and individuals; provides Excise and GST/HST rulings and interpretations to businesses, tax professionals and individuals:
  • spending of $39.9 million (415 FTEs);
  • received 122,621 telephone enquiries for Excise and GST/HST rulings; and
  • processed 4,711 written enquiries for Excise and GST/HST rulings.
• Registered Plans – registers pension plans and other deferred income plans, audits plans for compliance with the Income Tax Act, develops and publicizes administrative policy in their regard and approves contributions to defined benefit plans:
  • spending of $10.2 million (129 FTEs); and
  • administered 21,771 registered pension plans, 4,658 deferred profit sharing plans, 148 supplementary unemployment benefit plans and over 3,000 registered investments.
• Charities – processes applications for registration for charities, reviews annual returns to ensure compliance, and provides public information:
  • spending of $20.7 million (241 FTEs);
  • administered 82,595 registered charities;
  • reviewed 80,432 charities returns; and
  • conducted 989 audits.
• Allocation of Corporate Services spending
  • total of $98.4 million allocated to this program activity (897 FTEs).

Performance Report Card

Performance Discussion

Our Client Assistance program activity has the following expected result: Clients receive timely, accurate, and accessible information . We have met this expected result by meeting our expectations in the following key areas:

• we met our timeliness service standards for answering general, business, and charities telephone enquiries;
• agent accuracy remained high;
• we achieved our caller accessibility target for general and business services; and
• while we fell short on our commitment for advance income tax rulings, we met the service standard for technical interpretations.

By providing timely, accurate, and accessible information, tools, and services to taxpayers, they can meet their registration, filing, remittance, and reporting obligations without further intervention on our part, thereby ensuring that Canada's revenue base is protected. In so doing, we believe our Client Assistance program activity contributed to the achievement of the Tax Services strategic outcome.

Timely telephone service – We met our 80% target for answering calls within two minutes of entering the queue, for general and business enquiries, and our 85% target for answering calls within one minute of entering the queue, for charities telephone enquiries (Figure 10).

Figure 10 Percentage of Telephone Calls Answered within Service Standard

Timely responses to taxpayer correspondence – We received over 510,000 written enquiries for general or account specific information in 2005-2006. We are establishing a process for capturing national results for this program, and will begin reporting these in 2007-2008 once centralization of correspondence workloads in our regions is complete.

Timely response to requests for advance income tax rulings and technical interpretations – We met our target for providing technical interpretations within an average of 90 days, achieving a result of 87 days. Internal reallocation decisions led to a decrease in available resources; consequently, we did not meet our service standard commitment to issue advance income tax rulings to taxpayers within an average of 60 days, taking an average of 84 days in 2005-2006. Less timely rulings may lead taxpayers to undertake questionable transactions, likely resulting in reduced compliance and more costly audit and appeals activity. We are identifying how best to improve our results against this service standard.

Figure 11 Timely Response to Requests for Advance Income Tax Rulings and Technical Interpretations

Timely responses to requests for CPP/EI Rulings – We provide services to other government departments on a cost-recovery basis. Notably, we contribute to the regulatory process for the Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance with Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC). Our memorandum of understanding sets out an 85% service level for the timely completion of ruling requests; in 2005-2006, we again exceeded the agreed service level. We provided timely service 92% of the time for all types of rulings, completing almost 72,000 requests (Figure 12).

Figure 12 CPP/EI Rulings – Percentage Completed on Time

Timely information on legislative changes – We are responsible for implementing all legislative changes to tax laws, charity registrations, and social and economic benefit and incentive programs established by Parliament or provincial legislatures and delivered through the tax system. Through our rigorous annual review process, in 2005-2006, we ensured that new or changed information was accurately incorporated in our tax-related publications, most of which are available on our Web site.

Telephone enquiries agent accuracy – A variety of tools help to ensure that taxpayers find our services reliable and responsive. One tool is our quality assurance program, which evaluates the reliability of our telephone services. Results for the 2005-2006 Agent Accuracy survey indicate that performance in responding to telephone enquiries remained high relative to the 1996-1997 baseline year. To help ensure that accurate information continues to be offered to taxpayers, we are developing e-learning and integrated desktop tools for agents.

Accessible telephone service – We believe taxpayers are more likely to participate in an accessible tax system that provides responsive service. We strive to provide more equitable and efficient service by balancing accessibility and timeliness.

Caller accessibility measures the percentage of callers who succeed in reaching our telephone service. Over 2005-2006, we exceeded our 80% caller accessibility target for general, business and charities enquiries ² —attaining 83% for general enquiries, 91% for business enquiries, and 93% for charities enquiries (see Figure 13).

Figure 13 Telephone Caller Accessibility

Enhancement of our alternative information sources – Our goal, which—as noted on —is aligned with the Government of Canada's Service Vision, is to increase accessibility of our services by promoting the availability of online services and to shift resources to alternative service delivery channels such as the Internet. In a 2004-2005 EKOS survey on trends in Internet usage and access ³ , it was reported that:

• 72% of Canadians had Internet access at home;
• 71% had used a Government of Canada Web site in the past 12 months;
• 31% of Canadians said their most recent contact with the Government of Canada was via the Internet; and
• 90% of Internet users and 38% of non-users expected to use the Internet to deal with governments in the future.

Using these findings and other information, we continued our move towards self-service in 2005-2006 by maximizing our use of technology to optimize cross-channel service delivery while encouraging self-service through the use of electronic offerings.

Our Web site provides a wide range of information and answers to taxpayers' questions. To further enhance accessibility, our Web-based Smartlinks service allows taxpayers to connect directly from our Web site to an agent. While we saw an average 5% decline over the past three years in the number of taxpayers requiring a paper return package—in 2006 (for the 2005 tax year), 5.9 million taxpayers still required one—we continue to meet the huge demand for printed publications.

Integral to enhancing self-service, we built on our electronic services infrastructure in 2005-2006 to add new services to our Web site to allow taxpayers to submit transactions. Along with emphasizing the take-up of our electronic services, we have developed innovative electronic initiatives to streamline our programs. For example, we allow businesses to register for a Business Number and for four federal programs—GST/HST, corporate income tax, payroll deductions, and import/export—through our integrated Business Registration Online service. Using the same service, small and medium-sized businesses in British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Ontario that are starting or expanding operations can register or apply for a variety of business programs.

¹ Spending and FTE figures for sub-activities may not add up to this total due to rounding.

² Target levels were higher than 80% in prior years, i.e., 90-95% in 2002-2003 and 80-85% in 2003-2004. The reduction to 80% is to maximize the use of resources by balancing the cost of service with taxpayers' expectations.

³ Reported in The Hill Times, January 16, 2006.

Unaudited

Date modified:

2006-11-23