CRA Annual Corporate Survey 2007

General Overview

• To get information about what Canadians think of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) as an institution, the CRA conducts a yearly survey of Canadians. The 2007 survey is the third of a planned series of five annual surveys.
  
  
• The goals of the survey include understanding the factors that can influence the public's interactions with the CRA, as well as identifying trends in the public's views and attitudes about tax compliance, the CRA's overall performance, its values, and its levels of service on the whole.
  
  
• The information gathered from this survey is used in strategic planning activities by the CRA, as well as for reporting to the Parliament of Canada and to the Canadian public.
  
  
• The survey was undertaken for the CRA by the Environics Research Group between June 5 and 29, 2007, and administered to a national random sample of 4,004 adult Canadians.

Key findings

The public's perception of the CRA as an institution remains positive and is improving over time. Over the three years we have observed a gradual and steady increase in positive ratings for the CRA's overall performance, along with corresponding declines in negative ratings.

Corporate values

• Canadians continue to agree that the CRA operates consistently with its corporate values that focus on taxpayers.

Overall service

• Overall perceptions of service provided by the CRA as a whole remain positive among Canadians who have initiated contact with the CRA in the past year. However, the survey identified a gradual decrease in the level of positive results for all of the institutional service indicators. This decrease may be due to evolving service expectations or to changes introduced to the CRA's service model.

Tax compliance

• Regarding general views on tax compliance, the trend here also shows gradual improvement.

March 2007 service interruption

• In 2007, the survey included a special section to measure what, if any, effect the March 2007 service interruption had on Canadians' views of the CRA. A strong majority indicated they had the same or higher levels of confidence in the CRA's ability to protect personal tax information, and in the CRA's efficiency in processing tax returns.

Level of confidence and trust

• All of these indicators show that Canadians generally have a significant level of confidence and trust in the CRA. The results also show that there are areas of improvement that the CRA will investigate further to determine its course of action.

Executive Summary

Date modified:

2008-02-27