Results

Taxpayer and business assistance

The taxpayer and business assistance program is committed to providing taxpayers with the accurate and timely information they need to comply with Canada's tax laws. The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) website is organized according to taxpayer needs, giving detailed information about its programs and services for individuals and families, businesses, charities and giving, and representatives. Taxpayers with more complex information needs can contact the CRA's call centres, refer to its publications and videos, or use its technical interpretations and rulings services. To further support taxpayers, the CRA monitors charities and administers registered plans to make sure they meet the legislative requirements.

Performance results 

EXPECTED RESULT INDICATOR TARGET  2014-15 RESULTS 2015-16 RESULTS 2016-17 RESULTS
Taxpayers and businesses have access to the information and services they require to voluntarily comply with tax laws Percentage of service standard targets that are met or mostly met for individual and business enquiries 100% 85.7% Footnote 1 57.1% Footnote 1 85.7% Footnote 1
    General enquiries – telephone service level (target 80%) 81% 81% 81.2%
    Business enquiries – telephone service level (target 80%) 81% 81.4% 81.8%
    GST/HST rulings and interpretations – telephone enquiries (target 80%) 93.2% 86% 86%
    GST/HST rulings and interpretations – written enquiries (target 80%) 83% 74% 84%
    Charities – responding to telephone enquiries (target 80%) 76.2% 76.8% 82.5%
    Charities – written enquiries – routine (target 80%) 83.3% 71.6% Footnote 2 81.7%
    Charities – written enquiries – complex (target 80%) 62.6% Footnote 3 42% Footnote 4 44.8% Footnote 5
EXPECTED RESULT INDICATOR TARGET 2014-15 RESULTS 2015-16 RESULTS 2016-17 RESULTS
Organizations and businesses administering and/or producing registered plans, charities, and excise dutiable products are compliant with applicable legislation Percentage of charity, registered plans, and commodity audits completed compared to planned 100% 97.5% 94.7% 98.6%

Digital services

Canadian taxpayers are seeking increasingly convenient ways to get information to meet their tax obligations and receive their benefit entitlements. To this end, the CRA always looks for ways to meet their needs and expectations by providing information through a variety of means that are convenient and easy to use. The web is the mainstay of the Agency's communications efforts. In 2016-2017, taxpayers visited the CRA website over 200 million times and downloaded nearly 21 million forms and publications. We have been preparing for a seamless migration to the Canada.caii domain, where taxpayers use improved navigation to access the information they are searching for.

In 2016-2017, the CRA finalized preparations for the transition of all its web content to Canada.caii. For Canadian taxpayers seeking answers to their tax questions on the web, the Taxes tab on Canada.caii provides timely, accurate, and relevant information. We update our web content regularly to improve navigation and clarify information. The Agency also uses web analytics and usability testing to help us understand how Canadians use this information, and to assess and monitor the effectiveness of the content. As part of our efforts to make access to our information as convenient as possible, the CRA's web content is designed to display on any electronic device: smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer.

This is a photograph of a computer screen which displays a sample tweet from the Commissioner of the Canada Revenue Agency.

Twitter and YouTube

Canadians continue to seek information and updates through innovative platforms, such as videos on the CRA's YouTube channel and tweets from our Twitter account. We have responded to these demands by expanding the variety and reach of our social media campaigns to better serve taxpayers who choose these media. The CRA uses Twitter as a way to interact with Canadians; it allows us to widely share our web content and YouTube videos about the services we provide. The CRA's video series on its YouTube channel is available in several languages.

Written correspondence

In 2016-2017, the CRA sent out about 130 million pieces of correspondence, including notices, statements, and letters. We have advanced our initiative to simplify of all our correspondence by making significant changes to the design, tone, and structure to make it easier for Canadians to understand their tax obligations. We have received positive feedback from taxpayers and some media outlets about these improvements.

KEY RESULTS

In 2016-2017:

Outreach and the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program

The CRA engaged with and visited representatives from a variety of vulnerable population segments in 2016-2017. All outreach visits are conducted with the following goals in mind:

Innovation icon

The CRA established partnerships with other government departments—such as Employment and Social Development Canada and Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada—to collaborate on several initiatives aimed at building a whole-of-government approach to engagement with Indigenous peoples on benefits promotion.

As part of the Government of Canada's commitment to improve service to Canadians, we also maintained support to those who need help to meet their tax obligations, specifically through the CVITP. This program offers free clinics to help prepare income tax and benefit returns for eligible individuals, particularly those with a modest income.

A former user of the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program who needed help getting her taxes done for the first time when she arrived in Canada is now proudly celebrating five years as a volunteer. "I think it's important to help other people, to give back your blessings."

Funding from Budget 2016 has allowed the CRA to strengthen the services offered by the CVITP, recruit additional organizations and volunteers, and increase the number of taxpayers getting help to complete their returns through the program. To this end, the CRA has made improvements in the following areas:

KEY RESULTS

In 2016-2017:

Telephone programs

The CRA's call centres handle millions of tax enquiries every year and remain a key channel for providing service to taxpayers. While we have achieved a great deal of success in providing comprehensive and responsive information services online and self-service options on the telephone, the volume of calls continues to grow and the nature of calls are, on average, more complex and time-consuming. With the shift toward increasingly complex and longer calls, we have faced ongoing challenges with having sufficient resources. Although self-service options continue to improve and meet the needs of Canadians in new ways, the CRA finds that these services can create new reasons for Canadians to call the CRA. These reasons can include obtaining technical support to access a service, or to discuss a complex topic after having researched the details on our website.

Although we have achieved our annual service objectives, we are continuing to take steps to address the challenges in responding to call demand and continually improving the quality of the information provided to callers. The table below provides a detailed breakdown of the manner in which calls to our individual and business enquiries call centres were treated.

  Number of calls answered by an agent Number of calls abandoned in the agent queue Number of calls answered through self-service Number of calls that received a busy signal Footnote 6
Individual 9,770,365Footnote 7 258,534 5,529,335 14,947,677
Business 3,204,261Footnote 8 61,199 982,097 6,193,100
Innovation icon

During the last quarter of 2016-2017, we integrated our e-Services Helpdesk with our individual and business enquiries lines to reduce the need to call more than one phone line. Also, CRA phone agents now have the ability to provide callers with a security access code, allowing individual taxpayers to register for My Account immediately, rather than waiting five to ten business days to receive the security code by mail. The CRA also expanded the number of transactions available to callers through our automated Interactive Voice Response allowing callers to obtain information or perform many common transactions without requiring assistance from an agent. Access to our automated Interactive Voice Response is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

KEY RESULTS

In 2016-2017: 

Charities

The CRA is responsible for administering registration for charities, registered Canadian amateur athletic associations, and registered national arts service organizations. The Agency develops guidance products to help charities understand the requirements of registration. In 2016-2017, we published new guidance products to help taxpayers, as well as our first Report on the Charities Program 2015-16 to increase transparency through the sharing of information about how the CRA regulates charities.

The CRA also engaged in several charitable sector conferences and seminars over the 2016-2017 year allowing us to:

"The Government remains committed to clarifying the involvement of the charitable sector in public policy dialogue and development."

The Honourable Diane Lebouthillier,
Minister of National Revenue 

As part of the Government of Canada's commitment to clarifying the rules that govern the participation of charities in political activities and making it easier for them to comply with tax laws, extensive online and in-person consultations were held with over 165 public and charitable sector representatives in seven cities across the country. Subsequently, a consultation panel composed of five experts on the charitable sector reviewed the feedback and presented its report to the Minister of National Revenue in March 2017. The Minister has shared the report with the Department of Finance to act on suggestions for changes to the Income Tax Act; the Government of Canada will carefully review it to inform its future regulation of charities.

KEY RESULTS

In 2016-2017:

Policy, rulings, and interpretations

Taxpayers, businesses, tax professionals, and industry associations depend on the CRA for current and accurate technical tax information. Over the course of 2016-2017, the rulings the CRA issued helped ensure its key priorities of compliance and service were met. We also improved service to taxpayers and other stakeholders through the following income tax measures:

Innovation icon

In regard to this last measure, our new Dedicated Telephone Service gives a predetermined number of income tax service providers who prepare returns and advise a large number of taxpayers access by telephone to rulings officers. Facilitating access to experienced staff to help with complex technical income tax enquiries leaves lines open and call centre agents available on our general enquiries lines; this will help improve service to the rest of the Canadian tax-paying public.

Innovation icon

To improve service to taxpayers with respect to GST/HST, in May 2016, the CRA began accepting online requests for GST/HST rulings or interpretations through the new Submit Documents feature in My Business Account and Represent a Client. We also built on the efficiencies gained by implementing a new inventory model that routes policy or precedent-setting written requests for GST/HST rulings and interpretations to a technical expert in a timelier manner. Lastly, the CRA assisted with the implementation of rate increases for the harmonized sales tax in the following ways.

KEY RESULTS

In 2016-2017:

Registered plans

Registered plans are an important financial tool for many Canadians. Through tax exemptions, deductions, and deferrals, the Government of Canada encourages and helps Canadians to save for education, disability, and retirement. The CRA registers and monitors deferred-income and savings plans such as employee pension plans, retirement savings plans, education savings plans, disability savings plans, and tax-free savings accounts. We participate in the deferred-income and savings plans sector in Canada by promoting compliance with legislation through a combination of outreach, education, and verification.

Innovation icon

The CRA pursues service excellence and innovation through process and system transformations. We are expanding our capacity to communicate with clients by making it possible for them to provide more registered plans forms through an online tool. We are actively seeking a solution to enable full electronic communication with registered plan administrators.

Canadians who rely on registered plans to help them secure income for the future depend on the CRA to protect the integrity of the tax-deferred savings system in Canada. The CRA strives to make sure registered plans comply with legislative requirements—while reducing the administrative burden on plan administrators—by collaborating with our federal and provincial counterparts.

In administering the laws that apply to registered plans, however, we continued to face a number of challenges during 2016-2017 in meeting three of our service standards.

In response to missing our targets for these standards, we are committed both to putting the necessary staff in place over the coming year to address existing backlogs and to identifying the underlying issues that are contributing to these performance shortfalls, which we have experienced over the past number of years.

KEY RESULTS

In 2016-2017:

Taxpayer and business assistance 

BUDGETARY FINANCIAL RESOURCES (dollars)
MAIN
ESTIMATES
TOTAL
AUTHORITIES
PLANNED Footnote 9 ACTUAL Footnote 10 DIFFERENCE Footnote 11
(PLANNED MINUS ACTUAL)
412,286,804 355,845,141 412,286,804 346,045,382 66,241,422
HUMAN RESOURCES (FTEs) Footnote 12
PLANNED ACTUAL DIFFERENCE Footnote 13
3,665 4,160 (495)

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