CRA Annual Report to Parliament 2007-2008 - Our 2007-2008 Results
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Our 2007-2008 Results
Our Program Activities
Benefit Programs (PA6)
Overview
Our Benefit Programs activity contributes directly to the economic and social well-being of Canadians. We accomplish this by delivering income-based and other benefits, credits, and services to eligible residents for federal, provincial, and territorial governments.
We administer three core federal programs that issue benefit payments:
- the Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCTB);
- the Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax (GST/HST) credit; and
- Children’s Special Allowances (CSA).
We also deliver the Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB) on behalf of Human Resources and Social Development Canada, the Disability Tax Credit (DTC), as well as numerous ongoing and one-time benefit and credit programs and services on behalf of provincial, territorial, and other federal government clients. Our ability to deliver efficient, timely, and accurate programs and services makes us a valuable partner for government clients.
We carry out our Benefit Programs activity to achieve two expected results:
- benefit recipients receive timely, accurate, and accessible information; and
- eligibility determination and payment processing are timely and accurate.
Providing timely and accurate information and services for recipients allows them to understand our programs and their obligations. We believe that this encourages program uptake and compliance. We utilize a variety of tools, including paper publications, telephone services, our Web site, and opportunities for outreach presentations to provide recipients with the information they require.
Our Measure: Timely information
With more than six million benefit-related calls answered during 2007-2008, it is clear that recipients still rely on the telephone to contact us. To ensure that we are providing timely telephone service, we implemented a new timeliness service standard in 2007-2008 for CCTB telephone enquiries. We are committed to responding to calls within two minutes of entering the call queue 75% of the time. Our success rate of 78% exceeded this new target.
Our GST/HST credit telephone service was similarly successful, with 78% of calls receiving a response within two minutes, a slight improvement over the previous year’s timeliness results for these calls. These trends are important, as they allow us to measure our timeliness of service, as well as identify successful areas and those that may require improvement.
Our Measure: Accurate information
We believe that providing accurate information to potential and existing recipients reduces the need for clients to contact us, promotes application for programs, and enhances benefit compliance. In some cases, we create and direct information packages to reach specific groups to give them a clear understanding of our programs, and their rights and obligations as recipients. In 2007-2008, we distributed accurate information to individuals in several ways. For example, pamphlets and applications were placed in Welcome to Canada kits by Citizenship and Immigration Canada to inform newcomers about potential benefits and credits. We also presented DTC information at 21 conferences and established a 1-800 line to answer questions about the credit and how to apply. This number is given out along with our Web site address to specific groups as needs are identified.
We surveyed a sample of first-time CCTB applicants in 2007-2008 to obtain feedback on the information that we provided. Results compiled from the survey indicated that over 89% of those who responded to the survey were satisfied with the information received, and that 91% found the application instructions easy to understand.
Our Measure: Accessible information
Internal resource reallocations were made, which allowed us to meet our accessibility targets for CCTB enquiries, and improve our accessibility performance on GST/HST credit telephone enquiries. As a result, during 2007-2008, 87% of CCTB callers were successful in reaching our telephone service, as were 83% of GST/HST credit callers. As noted for other enquiry lines, there were concerns that the accessibility target (80%) for our telephone services was not high enough to satisfy the needs of CCTB recipients. Our caller accessibility targets have been increased to 90% for 2008-2009 to better meet the needs of Canadians.
The number of visits to My Account Benefits pages increased from 6.2 million in 2006-2007 to 7.6 million in 2007-2008. We enhanced our Web site to give recipients additional electronic access to information and services. One of these enhancements was the addition of new features to My Account, particularly for the DTC. In addition, we implemented an online child benefit application facility in July 2007. It was well received, as evidenced by the more than 15,000 applications submitted through this service.
In 2007-2008, analysis of each of our measures suggests that we provided recipients with information and services through a wide array of sources.
We strive to ensure that accurate payments are received by the right individuals in a timely manner. This requires that recipients provide us with valid information in compliance with legislation concerning benefit eligibility and the amounts issued.
In 2007-2008, more than 27% of Canadian families (over 847,000 families) receiving CCTB got the maximum benefit payment. The maximum monthly benefit went to those with a net income below $20,883. The value of our benefit payments to the lives of our recipients—up to $526 monthly for a two-child family—suggests why timely and accurate payments are essential.
Our Measure: Timely eligibility determination and payment processing
We process applications, account adjustments, payments and notices against timeliness standards. Timely information processing provides the up-to-date data required for accurate calculation.
During 2007-2008, our reviews showed that we met our service standard targets for timely processing of benefit-related transactions. We processed 99% of benefit applications and marital status change forms, and responded to 99% of written enquiries related to benefit and credits within 80 days. In addition, 99.99% of our payments were delivered on time, exceeding our target of 99%.
Our Measure: Accurate eligibility determination and payment processing
We introduced new service standards to measure accuracy in overall payments, notices, and letters that result from our processing activities. We met our target of 98% related to the overall accuracy in the processing of applications and marital status change forms. Our result of 97.3% in the overall accuracy in the processing of account adjustments, however, was slightly below our target of 98%.
An important indicator that our initial calculation of benefit payment is correct is the relatively low value of overpayments issued by our programs. Overpayments are often due to delayed account revisions. A net CCTB overpayment increase of $30.6 million was created during 2007-2008, representing 0.32% of the more than $9.5 billion issued. This result compares favourably with the target ceiling of 0.4%.
During 2007-2008, we worked to strengthen our benefits compliance rate by implementing elements of our long-term compliance strategy. For example, to enhance front-end detection of non-compliance, our staff at each Tax Centre received training on fraud detection and awareness. As a deterrent to non-compliance, we published compliance-oriented fact sheets and distributed news releases.
Our extensive reviews of recipient accounts are aimed at validating those identified as high-risk for potential overpayments or underpayments. In 2007-2008, we reviewed more than 253,000 benefits accounts, and adjusted approximately 166,000 of them. This represented just over 65% of accounts selected for review, exceeding our target of 50%. These results suggest we used effective criteria for selecting accounts for review.
During 2007-2008, our adjustments uncovered almost $195 million in benefit and credit overpayments. Where recipients were overpaid, we will offset amounts from future payments, refunds, and credits to which the recipients are entitled, and apply them to the outstanding balance, or begin collection action.
Validation-related adjustments also found individuals and families who had been underpaid. In 2007-2008, these adjustments, favouring benefit recipients, amounted to $81 million.
In 2007-2008, analysis of each of our measures confirmed that our compliance projects effectively identified and targeted non-compliant individuals and families. Our efforts build on our commitment to issue accurate benefit payments to Canadians.
- Benefit Programs Client Services – We handled almost 6.3 million telephone enquiries.
- Benefit Programs Administration – We issued 88.5 million benefit payments, totalling $16.0 [Footnote 2] billion to more than 11 million recipients. We determined $667 million in Disability Tax Credit entitlements for almost 499,000 individuals. We processed over 702,000 applications and marital status change forms, over 688,000 account maintenance adjustments, and almost 1.2 million in-year GST/HST credit account redeterminations.
- Direct transfer payments under statutory programs – We issued more than $208 million under the Children’s Special Allowances (CSA) program and just under $1 million under the Energy Cost Benefit program.
[Footnote 1] Spending for FTE figures for sub-activities may not add up to this total due to rounding.
[Footnote 2] Including the $667 million in entitlements to the DTC 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 $16.7 billion.
Timely Eligibility Determination and Payment Processing
Accurate Eligibility Determination and Payment Processing
- Date modified:
- 2009-01-29