Assessment of returns and payment processing

Performance results 

The CRA makes it easy to meet filing, reporting, and payment obligations by offering an expanding suite of secure and easy-to-use services. We review the information received for errors and adjust tax returns for individuals and businesses. We also detect non-compliance through risk assessment and third-party data matching.

Service enhancements

Responding to the increased desire of Canadians to interact digitally, we expanded our digital offerings and provided access to clear, accurate information and timely, convenient services. In 2016-2017, we launched various other innovative services that will improve taxpayers' interactions with the CRA.

Auto-fill my return

This service can automatically fill out parts of an individual income tax and benefit return based on information the CRA has on hand. This significantly reduces the risk for human error and the burden on taxpayers who now only need to confirm the information imported about tax information slips and other tax-related information, such as capital gains and losses, as well as tuition, education, and textbook carryover amounts.

The Auto-fill my return service was improved for the 2017 filing season. Taxpayers were able to access more slips and could use the service to fill out returns for prior years. Between February 2017 and July 31, 2017, 7.9 million individual requests were made for tax information using the Auto-fill my return service—information that was delivered quickly and securely.

Express notice of assessment

The new express notice of assessment (NOA) is available to taxpayers who use certified tax software to file their returns and are registered for My Account or My Business Account. Regular turnaround times for processing returns filed on paper are six to eight weeks. Under the previous standard for electronic filing, taxpayers received a NOA in eight to ten days. Beginning in the 2017 tax filing season, taxpayers who filed using certified tax software received an express NOA within 24 hours.

ReFILE 

During the 2016-2017 year, the CRA successfully launched its ReFILE service, making it easier for the more than 1.6 million individuals per year who want to amend their income tax and benefit return. Four out of five of these individuals were making amendments on paper. ReFILE now allows taxpayers to make changes online through their EFILE service provider. This improves timely, convenient, and secure services. Since its launch in February 2017—and as of July 31, 2017—over 51,000 ReFILE requests have been made.

Submit documents

The Submit documents service allows taxpayers to securely submit documents that the CRA requests through one of our secure portals: My Account, My Business Account, and Represent a Client. Documents are accepted for certain CRA programs. As of June 2016, taxpayers requesting an adjustment to their tax return could use this service as an alternative method to making an adjustment request. In 2016-2017, taxpayers sent 1.4 million documents via this service, which represents a 59% increase over the previous year.

My Account and My Business Account

Canadian taxpayers have come to rely on these secure digital services to perform tasks like viewing their personal income and benefit information and managing their tax affairs online. The CRA has continued to expand and improve its My Account and My Business Account portals, adding options such as:

• account alerts
• telephone authentication
• Link to My Service Canada

In 2016-2017, individuals or their representatives logged in over 41 million times to My Account, and businesses or their representatives logged in over eight million times to My Business Account.

Online mail

The CRA no longer issues certain types of correspondence by traditional mail to taxpayers who sign up for online mail. Instead, we send an email to the taxpayer, telling them there is online mail available to view in My Account or My Business Account. Over the course of 2016-2017, the Agency added more correspondence items to its online services, including instalment reminders and benefit notices and slips. This year the CRA also made it easier for businesses to sign up for online mail. As a result, more than 97,000 businesses signed up last year—a fivefold increase over each of the previous two years.

Account alerts

In 2016-2017, the Agency put in place additional advanced fraud prevention measures in My Account to safeguard the information that taxpayers entrust to us. One such measure is account alerts, which sends notifications to a registered taxpayer's email address when an address or banking information for direct deposit on their account has been changed, or when mail the CRA sent to them was returned. In the two-month period between the launch of account alerts in February 2017 and the end of the fiscal year on March 31, 2017, over 280,000 taxpayers registered for the service.

Telephone authentication

New authentication measures were put in place in 2016-2017 to allow taxpayers to access our convenient My Account services without the need to wait five to ten business days to receive a security code in the mail. Simply by validating their identity over the telephone while speaking to one of our call centre agents, taxpayers registering for My Account for the first time may now receive their code by email within minutes and can access the portal immediately. Between the launch of this service in February 2017 and the end of the 2016-2017 fiscal year, the CRA securely emailed over 370,000 security codes requested using telephone authentication.

Link to My Service Canada

Canadians expect easier access to accurate and timely information and services. In 2016-2017, the Canada Revenue Agency launched a new initiative in collaboration with Service Canada. The Link to My Service Canada allows users of CRA's My Account to link directly to their My Service Canada Account—and vice versa—through a single secure session. Since the launch of this service in October 2016, there has been an average of 4,500 transfers per day from My Service Canada to My Account.

KEY RESULTS

In 2016-2017:

• 1.7 million individuals registered for online mail and over ten million pieces of correspondence were issued online
• 97,736 businesses registered for online mail and over 556,000 correspondence items were issued online
• 1,470,590 individuals enrolled in My Account; 64% of individuals are now registered
• 159,925 new business owners enrolled in My Business Account; over three million businesses are now registered

Processing returns and payments

Individual returns and business returns activities help taxpayers voluntarily meet their tax obligations by processing their information as quickly and as accurately as possible. The Agency assesses the information provided; makes adjustments where necessary; advises individuals and businesses of any changes; and issues or processes payments. It also registers businesses for a business number and administers corporate tax, GST/HST, excise tax, and those programs that administer other levies.

Over the course of 2016-2017, the CRA added new payment options, including pre-authorized debit for taxpayers who e-file personal income tax and benefit returns, and we increased the number of payment types available to online platforms of financial institutions.

In 2016-2017, we processed over 31 million income tax returns and assessed over $2.1 billion in additional taxes owing by verifying claims for errors, reviewing high-risk claims, and matching the information in filed returns to third-party data.

KEY RESULTS

In 2016-2017:

• 86.1% of individual returns were filed online for the 2017 filing season
• We processed 28,858,681 individual income tax and benefit returns
• 89.3% of corporation income tax returns were filed online
• We identified nearly $68.5 million in additional taxes owing on corporation income tax returns
• 87% of GST/HST returns were filed online and processed
• We processed approximately 341,000 GST/HST rebate applications (excluding those in Quebec, which were processed by Revenu Québec)
• We issued over 16 million refunds, totalling over $28 billion
• We reviewed over 285,000 individual returns, and taxpayers received beneficial adjustments to their tax returns of almost $117 million.
• Almost 66% of refunds to individuals were made by direct deposit
• We processed nearly 39 million payments, totalling over $498 billion, and received 80% of payments electronically (including payments remitted at financial institutions)

Service Renewal

Canadians are increasingly turning to the internet to file and pay their taxes. Since 2005, the number of taxpayers filing online has almost doubled—from 12.2 million to 24.4 million—and the number of payments received electronically has increased from 18.6 million to 31.1 million. Today, more than 86.1% of taxpayers file their tax and benefit returns online, and the CRA receives 80% of payments electronically. These increases mean there has been a steady decline in the number of paper-based transactions the Agency processes across the country. As online processing grows, our processing centres are receiving less and less paper-based work.

The Agency has responded to this changing environment and is looking at its business differently. We launched the Service Renewal Initiative in November 2016 to improve the way our work is managed by consolidating processing activities in fewer sites. Four sites (Winnipeg, Sudbury, Jonquière, and Summerside) will specialize in processing and will grow in size. Work from two specialized processing sites in Ottawa will gradually be consolidated into sites elsewhere in Canada. New National Verification and Collections centres will be located in Surrey, Shawinigan, and St. John's to improve how we manage our collections and verification activities.

The Service Renewal Initiative will create a more efficient organization and will fully leverage all employees to prepare for future growth and sustainability.

Voluntary Disclosures Program

The Voluntary Disclosures Program promotes compliance with Canada's tax laws by encouraging taxpayers to voluntarily come forward and correct previous omissions in their dealings with the CRA.

The Voluntary Disclosures Program is intended to help taxpayers correct their affairs. It can, however, be used by sophisticated taxpayers to minimize or avoid the penalties that are intended to deter aggressive non-compliance. During 2016-2017, the Agency undertook a comprehensive review of the Voluntary Disclosures Program in response to the Sixth Report of the Standing Committee on Finance, The Canada Revenue Agency, Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion: Recommended Actions. This review was also supported by the Minister's Offshore Compliance Advisory Committee, who had recommended the continuation of the Voluntary Disclosures Program but proposed to tighten the criteria for acceptance into the program. The Agency recently launched a 60-day online consultation to obtain feedback from Canadians on proposed revisions to the voluntary disclosures policy. Input from the public will help the Government of Canada ensure that Canadians have confidence in the fairness of their tax system, a key element of ensuring compliance. The CRA will announce changes to the program in the fall of 2017.

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance report can be found at:
http://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/FINA/report-6/^iv

The Report on the Voluntary Disclosures Program can be found at:
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/programs/about-canada-revenue-agency-cra/report-on-voluntary-disclosures-program.html^v

KEY RESULTS

In 2016-2017:

• We received more than 18,500 voluntary disclosures and generated more than $1.6 billion in previously unreported income through voluntary disclosures. More than $900 million of that amount resulted from offshore disclosures

Assessment of returns and payment processing