Evaluating Our Overall Performance

We Have One Expected Outcome

Appeals supports the achievement of the CCRA's two strategic outcomes — compliance and innovation — through the results it achieves against the following expected outcome: Canadians receive an impartial and timely review of contested decisions through our redress system. Our aim is to provide clients with a fair dispute resolution process. An impartial and timely process fosters trust in the integrity of our tax and customs systems, which helps promote voluntary compliance with these systems.

To earn and keep the trust of our clients, we must have a redress process that is fair and that is also seen to be fair. A basic aspect of fairness is ensuring clients are informed of their rights and how to exercise them. Making sure the process is timely, accessible, and consistent also contributes to its actual and perceived fairness.

Performance Context

Our goal in Appeals is to ensure that all of the CCRA's clients have access to responsive and impartial redress. As illustrated in Exhibit 68 , while most of our clients are individual income tax filers (74%), we also handle disputes from non-resident visitors (1%) and commercial importers (6%), among others.

Exhibit 68: Actual Redress Clients

High-Level Success Criteria

Below, we assess our performance against our expected outcome using the following high-level success criteria:

• reviews of disputes and requests under the fairness provisions are, and are perceived to be, fair and impartial;

• clients find our services accessible and are kept informed of the progress of their disputes and requests;

• disputes are resolved in a timely and consistent manner; and

• our collective efforts promote an environment of trust for our impartiality and fairness that encourages voluntary compliance.

Conclusions Against Expected Outcome

On balance, we believe that we mostly met our expected outcome through our performance against the above success criteria. While we believe that we are generally providing fair and impartial reviews of disputes, timeliness of case processing remains an issue, despite some advances made in 2001-2002. We recognize that slow turnaround times can have a negative effect on voluntary compliance, and can, in some cases, make the appeals process more costly and appear less accessible to potential clients. Process improvements and targets are being implemented to improve the timeliness of our performance over the next several years.

To enhance our ability to keep clients informed about their disputes, we introduced a new service standard in 2001-2002 to provide clients with a meaningful status update on their disputes within 30 days of filing. We exceeded this standard across all of our program areas. We also have in place tools and guidelines to promote the consistent and proper handling of disputes and fairness requests. However, we have not progressed sufficiently in instituting agency-wide monitoring programs to provide greater assurance of consistency and fairness in our decisions. Ultimately, the majority (about 60%) of our clients agreed with our resolution of their disputes, including a fairly high percentage of those whose claims we disallowed either in part or in full, meeting our expectations in this area. Only approximately 7% of all dispute cases were resolved in the courts.

Our commitment to fairness is supported by the 7-Point Plan for Fairness, which has now been implemented agency-wide. As part of the plan, we have promoted our Voluntary Disclosures Program, which allows clients to correct past errors or omissions in their tax, duty, and tariff obligations without penalty. The dollar value of assessments under this program has grown considerably since 2000-2001.

Exhibit 69 , the Appeals report card, provides a one-page summary of our performance against each of our six anticipated results in support of our expected outcome. Starting on , we discuss in detail these findings and our conclusions, using detailed success criteria that are built on the high-level criteria.

Exhibit 69: Appeals Performance Report Card

Appeals Report Card Expected outcome – Canadians receive an impartial and timely review of contested decisions through our redress system
	Anticipated results	This year's ratings	Last year's ratings	Variance		Actual results as demonstrated by	Page
Managing the Compliance Continuum	1. Transparent, accessible, and consistent redress mechanisms promote fair and impartial treatment					We exceeded our new service standard for updating clients on the status of their disputes within 30 days of filing.
						Clients are aware of, and are provided with sufficient information on their rights to redress and on the procedure for filing a dispute at no cost.
						Our pattern of year-over-year dispute outcomes is consistent.
	2. Our dispute resolution service is provided on a timely basis					Modest progress in turnaround times in largest programs, but disputes still taking too long to resolve.
						To achieve further progress in timeliness, process improvements and targets are being implemented.
	3. Handling of fairness provisions is consistently applied across programs and regions					Appeals Branch is the functional lead for fairness within the CCRA.
						Guidelines and tools for the consistent application of fairness provisions are in place across business lines.
						Beyond initiating a review of our fairness registry for tracking requests and decisions related to cancellation of interest and penalties, little progress was made in implementing the systematic fairness monitoring that will allow us to provide greater assurance of consistency.
	4. Risk management of dispute and litigation issues is effective					New risk management framework was implemented to provide a more comprehensive approach to assessing and managing risks.
						Consistent with our expectations, the vast majority of disputes continue to be resolved administratively, and the CCRA's decision is confirmed in the majority of those cases that proceed to the courts.
						Quality assurance and monitoring programs are not yet in place, but were piloted, with implementation beginning in 2002-2003.
						When areas requiring further clarification are identified, proposals for legislative or other changes are initiated.
	5. Knowledgeable and skilled workforce is in the right place at the right time					Staffing shortfall was reduced from last year.
						Workloads were reassigned to better utilize available resources, contributing to improved processing times for income tax files.
Innovating for the Future (Year 2 of 5)	6. Fairness principles are applied and integrated across all programs					With the 7-Point Plan for Fairness now implemented, Appeals has successfully concluded on its innovation agenda and exceeded expectations with respect to voluntary disclosures. Our next step is to monitor our progress in applying the fairness principles.
						Voluntary disclosures continue to increase, with related assessments increasing by 61% over the prior year.
						The 7-Point Plan for Fairness is implemented and no longer forms part of our innovation agenda. The principles of fairness contained in the plan are now part of core operations.
						Inventories for the Voluntary Disclosures Program are growing; to address the issue a stable funding source for the Program is being secured.

Contributions of Others

While the achievement of our expected outcome is largely within our own control, we do sometimes rely on other parties to help provide fair and timely dispute resolution.

Of course, taxpayers can influence and shorten the turnaround time of files in workable status through the timely submission of comprehensive materials or additional documentation.

To enhance fairness, we cooperate with the Department of Finance to help identify legislative amendments and recommend these changes to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice also interprets precedent-setting court cases and acts as lead on any litigation issues on our behalf.

Logic Model

We have prepared an Appeals logic model (see ) which offers a roadmap showing the links between our inputs, activities, and outputs that are essential to achieving our six anticipated results in support of our expected outcome. It also shows how these fit into the Agency's overall strategic outcomes. This logic model is the foundation of our performance report card which summarizes our performance against each anticipated result.

Date modified:

2002-11-07