Our 2005-2006 Results

Our Program Activities

Benefit Programs (PA6)

Within the Benefit Programs program activity, we administer the Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCTB), the Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax (GST/HST) Credit, Children's Special Allowances, and the Disability Tax Credit, as well as 17 ongoing child benefit and credit programs for the provinces and territories, along with one-time payment programs. We also supply information authorized by law to federal, provincial and territorial clients to support the delivery of their income-tested programs.

In 2005-2006, spending for this program activity totalled $669.5 million (1,677 FTEs) or 18.1% of the CRA's overall expenditures ¹ . Of this $669.5 million, $620.3 million was for net program expenditures and $49.2 million was allocated to this program activity for Corporate Services.

Figure 38 Resource Spending

• Enquiries Services – develops and delivers national programs related to the provision of information, tools, and assistance to benefit recipients.
  • spending of $20 million (370 FTEs);
  • over 9.1 million telephone enquiries;
  • over 2.4 million page views of the ‘Child and Family Benefits' Web site; and
  • over 3.3 million page views to Benefits pages in the My Account portal.
• Eligibility Determination and Payment Processing – provides Canadians with the right tools and information so that they can provide us with the information we need to register them on the appropriate benefit rolls and ensure they receive timely and accurate benefit payments:
  • spending of $63.1 million (855 FTEs);
  • issued over 75 million benefit payments;
  • distributed $9.2 billion to 3.25 million CCTB recipients, including over $3.3 billion in National Child Benefit Supplements and over $55 million in Child Disability Benefits;
  • distributed $3.4 billion to over 9.5 million GST/HST Credit recipients, and processed over 1,780,000 in-year GST/HST credit account redeterminations;
  • distributed over $264 million in payments under ongoing provincial/territorial programs to almost 770,000 recipients and $1.26 billion in one-time payments to over 2.3 million Albertans under the 2005 Resource Rebate program; and
  • administered over $610 million in Disability Tax Credits for almost 480,000 individuals.
• Validation and Controls – conducts review activities to validate that the eligibility of those receiving benefits and credits, and the amounts to be paid, are correct in accordance with the legislation:
  • spending of $10 million (116 FTEs)
• Allocation of Corporate Services spending
  • total of $49.2 million allocated to this program activity (335 FTEs).

Note: The remaining $527.3 million was devoted to direct transfer payments under statutory programs:

• $169.6 million under the Children's Special Allowances program; and
• $357.7 million under the Energy Cost Benefit program to over 1.4 million recipients.

Performance Report Card

Performance Discussion

The Benefit Programs activity has the following three expected results:

• Benefit recipients receive timely, accurate, and accessible information;
• Eligibility determination and payment processing are timely and accurate; and
• Non-compliance is identified and addressed.

We believe our Benefit Programs activity has contributed to the achievement of the Benefit Programs strategic outcome: that eligible families and individuals receive timely and correct benefit payments, contributing to the integrity of Canada's income security system through the following:

• maintaining a telephone service for benefit recipients which mostly met timeliness and accessibility targets;
• continuing our strong performance in processing benefit payments and associated transactions in a timely and accurate manner; and
• ensuring that the correct amounts are being paid to entitled benefit recipients through the results of our validation and controls program.

Timely telephone service – Service level measures the percentage of telephone calls answered ² within two minutes of when a caller enters the queue. Despite increased volumes, we answered 76% of calls within 2 minutes on both the CCTB and GST/HST credit telephone lines, mostly meeting our internal performance targets of 80% (Figure 39).

Figure 39 Telephone – Service Level

We intend to implement a service standard for CCTB in 2006-2007. We are working towards setting a new target for GST/HST credit calls in light of the experience gained during our first full year with the national network implemented in 2004.

Accessible telephone service – Caller accessibility measures the percentage of callers who succeed in reaching our telephone service. We mostly met our 80% internal performance target for CCTB, with 77% caller accessibility (Figure 40). During our first full year with the GST/HST credit national network, 74% of callers reached our lines; we are reviewing targets for this service.

Figure 40 Telephone – Caller Accessibility

Note: The internal performance target for CCTB caller accessibility was changed from 80-85% to 80% in the second quarter of 2005-2006.

Timely processing – As discussed on , we maintained our high standard by issuing over 99.9% of payments on time. Payments totalling almost $14.7 ³ billion were sent to over 11 million low- and moderate-income recipients under the programs we administered (such as CCTB, GST/HST credit, various provincial and territorial programs), as well as the two one-time payment programs that we delivered in 2005-2006. Our monitoring studies show we also met our service standards for timely processing of benefit applications and elections ⁴ and mostly met our service standards for account maintenance adjustments requiring a notice to be issued ⁵ (Figure 41).

Figure 41 Processing Timeliness

Accurate processing – Based on our records at the time of processing, monitoring studies show we met our targets by accurately issuing over 99.5% of benefit payments and notices when processing applications ⁶ and almost 99.7% when processing account maintenance adjustments (Figure 42). ⁷ These results confirm the accuracy of our systems and processing of account-specific enquiries by our staff and also the successful implementation of legislative changes in July 2005 to the benefit amounts and income thresholds for each of the federal payment programs, and for seven of the ongoing programs we administer for provinces and territories.

Figure 42 Processing Accuracy

Satisfaction with the application process – Each year, we survey first-time CCTB applicants to determine their satisfaction with various aspects of the application process. The 2005 survey ⁸ showed satisfaction levels very similar to previous years:

• 95% of respondents agreed that application instructions were easy to understand;
• 94% were satisfied with the information received;
• 77% were satisfied with application processing times; and
• 93% were satisfied with the service they received.

In each case, these results exceeded our targets.

Accuracy – Overpayment control – Accuracy is also demonstrated by the minimal value of benefit overpayments issued. Overpayments result when, for example, the CCTB is paid to recipients who belatedly report that they no longer have children in their care, or through any validation review that results in a debit adjustment. Net CCTB overpayments were $25 million in 2005-2006, representing 0.27% of the over $9.2 billion issued (Figure 43). This result is consistent with overpayments of 0.27% experienced since the program's inception in 1993. The net overpayments are also well under the new ceiling of 0.4% that was established in 2005-2006 to demonstrate proper payment control.

Figure 43 CCTB Overpayment Debt as a Percentage of Current Year Payments (and Associated Dollar Amounts)

Expanded partnerships – Programs administered for other clients – In addition to all of the ongoing benefit programs we administered, we delivered two new one-time payment programs in 2005-2006:

• the Alberta 2005 Resource Rebate program in January 2006, issuing $1.26 billion to over 2.3 million provincial residents (this is the fifth one-time payment program delivered for a province since 2000, and the second one-time payment program we have delivered for Alberta, following the Alberta Energy Tax Refund program delivered in 2000-2001); and
• the Energy Cost Benefit program for the Government of Canada in January 2006, issuing $357.7 million to over 1.4 million eligible recipients.

We also sunsetted the Nova Scotia Taxpayer Refund program by the April 2006 deadline specified in provincial legislation.

Expanded partnerships – Services provided for other clients – In 2005-2006, we expanded the services we provide by implementing four new income verification data exchanges with provinces using File Transfer Protocol (FTP) methodology. FTP allows us to release limited taxpayer information, with consent, using a secure, two-way, online, electronic data exchange, reducing the need for our offices to release information over the counter.

In 2005-2006, we processed over 11.4 million income verification transactions using FTP. This is an increase of 60% from the 7.1 million processed last year, while verifications using non-FTP methods fell from 1,170,000 to 370,000. There are now 17 provincial programs using our FTP service. Seven additional programs are currently in testing, and we are negotiating with six provinces to enrol 19 more programs.

Through the Commissioner's Annual Reports to each province and territory, we report to our clients about the work we do on their behalf.

Identifying non-compliance – Proper Entitlement – As discussed in the chapter Achieving Our Benefit Programs Strategic Outcome (Figure 8), we estimate that 95.1% of CCTB accounts for 2003-2004 (the benefit year of our most recent random sample study) had complete and accurate payment and account information, just over our target of 95%.

Addressing non-compliance – Reviews and Adjustments – Our validation and controls program target accounts identified as high-risk for potential overpayments or underpayments and demonstrates that we have a credible enforcement presence among recipients. We reviewed over 294,200 benefits accounts in 2005-2006, with a special emphasis on the CCTB program, where we reviewed 5.42% of accounts, just over our 5% target. Overall, we adjusted 183,100 accounts, which represents 62.2% of accounts selected for review (Figure 44), exceeding our target of 50%. This suggests we have effective criteria for selecting accounts for review, given the high percentage of accounts already estimated by our random sample as having complete and accurate payment and account information.

Figure 44 Number of Cases Reviewed – Number and Percentage of Adjustments

Dollar Impact of validation programs – For the first time, we can provide the total dollar value of the adjustments we process, involving both cases where we need to recoup benefits and where insufficient benefits were paid. The total overpayments recouped was over $184 million. Where recipients are overpaid, we recoup amounts from payments or other refunds and credits to which the recipient may be entitled and apply them to the outstanding balance. If necessary, we take collection action.

At the same time, adjustments favouring benefit recipients amounted to almost $72 million. We will use the information on the dollar impact gained with this new capacity to help guide future validation work.

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

² Answered calls are calls handled by an agent as well as calls abandoned within two minutes of entering the queue. For abandoned calls, we assume that benefit recipients received the information they needed from the pre-recorded messages they heard while on hold, as these are updated continuously to address topical issues.

³ Including the $610 million in entitlements to the Disability Tax Credit program which are delivered through the T1 assessing process rather than as direct cash payments, the total amount of benefits and credits issued is almost $15.3 billion.

⁴ Internal CRA Quality Assurance Studies, Monitoring CCTB Application Processing Timeframes, Final Reports for May 2005, August 2005, November 2005 and February 2006.

⁵ Internal CRA Quality Assurance Study, Activity Types 307/308 Processing Timeframes, Final Report, April 2005.

⁶ Internal CRA Quality Assurance Study, Activity Types 395/397 (Accuracy), Final Report, January 2006.

⁷ Internal CRA Quality Assurance Study, Activity Types 307/308 (Accuracy), Final Report, September 2005.

⁸ CCTB First-Time Applicants Survey, September 2005. We are cautious in attributing too much significance to the results due to a low response rate (15%).

Unaudited

Date modified:

2006-11-23