Service Improvement Request — CRA Call Routing

One of the main ways to contact the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is by telephone. Since 2021 the CRA has extended its hours of service and is available Monday to Friday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Taxpayers can use their CRA account to make many changes; however, some choose to contact the CRA by telephone for a variety of reasons, such as to:

• Get help to unlock a CRA account
• Make payments
• Update personal information
• Discuss a tax situation
• Ask about the Disability Tax Credit (DTC)

Our Office has received calls from taxpayers who unsuccessfully tried to reach an agent at the CRA’s contact centre during its hours of service, because the telephone system told them the office was closed even though it should have been open. 

The CRA restricts its hours of service to taxpayers by area code, so the issue happens when a taxpayer calls from a telephone number that has an area code which does not match their physical location. This means, for example, that if a taxpayer keeps their number after they move from Vancouver, British Columbia to St. John’s, Newfoundland, then when they call the CRA at 8 a.m., the CRA’s telephone system will deny them access because the time in Vancouver is 3:30 a.m.  

Any taxpayer who received a telephone number, but have since moved to a different time zone could be affected. With more and more taxpayers relying on cellphones, many people might be affected by this issue.

The use of cellphones is widespread today and is steadily continuing to replace landline telephones in Canadian households. Statistics Canada reported that in 2021, 93.9% of Canadian households reported having at least one cellphone, compared with 91.3% in 2019 and 89.4% in 2017^{Note de bas de page 1} . Also, the number of subscriptions to mobile services in Canada was 35.4 million in 2022, up from 33.6 million in 2021^{Note de bas de page 2} .

We knew about this issue in the past, but were informed by the CRA in 2021 that it would no longer be an issue because it was allowing taxpayers to contact the CRA at any time regardless of their area code. Therefore, when we heard from taxpayers again that they could not call the CRA’s contact centre due to their area code, we asked the CRA why this was once again an issue.

The CRA explained that it only ran a pilot that prevented this issue from happening, but the pilot was no longer needed as call demand stabilized after most COVID-19 benefits ended.

The CRA saw value in implementing this change during the COVID-19 pandemic to extend its contact centre hours of service to allow Canadians to call from any time zone at any time as long as there were agents available. Although this change was temporary, it shows that the issue stemming from the CRA’s time of day routing system can permanently be addressed. 

There is no information available to taxpayers on canada.ca about the CRA’s time of day call routing. The CRA confirmed to us that it “does not provide information regarding the caller's area code having to match the hours they contact the CRA, but [it] does indicate hours of operation are in local time. Local time is assumed to correspond with the telephone number area code/region they are calling from, not their physical location.”

When we questioned the CRA about this issue, it told us that to prevent this from happening, callers would need to:

• call from a landline
• call from a telephone number with an area code which matches their physical location
• block their telephone number to receive service in the default Eastern time zone
• call during the hours of operation which match their area code.

However, this information is not provided on canada.ca. The CRA only provides these options to mitigate the issue as part of its response to complaints it receives from taxpayers about its time of day calls routing.

Restricting callers based on their area code without informing them, and not proactively providing them with options to mitigate the issue, could cause confusion in instances where a taxpayer is calling from a different location than the time zone with which their telephone number is associated. 

At Northern Service Centres, the CRA indicates that Canadians can only call the dedicated individual and benefit enquiries or the business enquiries telephone northern lines if they are calling from an 867 area code. This means that those residing in the Territories may not be able to reach the CRA agents familiar with northern resident issues if their telephone number did not originate from the Territories. This might happen if a resident of the Territories has a telephone number without an 867 area code.

That said, the CRA informed us that the dedicated telephone northern lines route callers directly to the same agents staffing the regular enquiries lines, who are equipped to answer questions related to northern tax matters, simply without having to navigate the Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

This information, however, is not provided at Northern Service Centres so taxpayers may be unaware that they don’t necessarily need to call from a telephone number with an 867 area code to reach a CRA agent to talk about northern tax matters as they can call the regular enquiries lines.

To improve the service the CRA provides to Canadians, the Taxpayers’ Ombudsperson requests the CRA to:

• communicate to Canadians how the telephone number they are calling from could prevent them from reaching the CRA: 
  • during its hours of service.
  • at its dedicated telephone service for territorial residents.
• communicate to Canadians how they can avoid having their telephone number restrict them from accessing the CRA’s telephone services. For example, the CRA could change the messaging callers receive when the office is closed. The telephone system could say “our office is closed. If you are calling between 8:00am-8:00pm Monday to Friday, or 9:00am-5:00pm Saturday, you may be calling with an area code that does not match your current location. Block your number and call us again.”
• allow all territorial residents to call the dedicated telephone service for residents of the Territories, regardless of their telephone number. For example, the CRA could allow callers to call from a blocked number by changing the default area code to 867.
• accept calls to its contact centre regardless of the telephone number from which a taxpayer is calling so long as an agent is available.

Since the Taxpayers’ Ombudsperson made this request, the CRA has improved the service by extending the hours for its individual and business tax enquiries lines and the dedicated telephone lines for the residents of the Territories to provide taxpayers with equal access during its hours of service, regardless of the caller’s area code, as long as an agent is available. The enquiries contact centres are now open Monday to Friday from 6:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. and Saturday from 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., Eastern time.

However, the CRA has not made the same changes to its Northern residents lines, stating that it does not want to make it possible for the general public to access these lines. Instead, it now informs callers who do not have an 867 area code about why their call is being restricted. The CRA also includes this information on its web page for this service. There is not currently a way for someone in the North to call these lines without a phone number with an 867 area code.