Opinion: No one can fire the CRA, and it shows

Skip to Content News Archives Economy Energy Oil & Gas Renewables Electric Vehicles Mining Commodities Agriculture Real Estate Mortgages Mortgage Rates Finance Banking Insurance Fintech Cryptocurrency Work Wealth Smart Money Wealth Management Investor Personal Finance Family Finance Retirement Taxes High Net Worth FP Comment Executive Women Puzzmo Newsletters Financial Times Business Essentials More Innovation Information Technology FP500 Podcasts Small Business Lives Told Tails Told Shopping Financial Post Store Obituaries Place a Notice Advertising Advertising With Us Advertising Solutions Postmedia Ad Manager Sponsorship Requests Classifieds Place a Classifieds ad Working Profile Settings My Subscriptions Saved Articles My Offers Newsletters Customer Service FAQ News Economy Energy Mining Real Estate Finance Work Wealth Investor FP Comment Executive Women Puzzmo Newsletters Financial Times Business Essentials This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.HomeFP CommentOpinion: No one can fire the CRA, and it showsA business that answered queries incorrectly, held customers' money for months and gave them a new representative every quarter would failLast updated 43 minutes ago You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.Small businesses are held to hard standards. File on time. Pay on time. Respond promptly or face penalties and interest. Hard standards are good. It’s time CRA was held to them, too. Photo by HYUNGCHEOL PARK/PostmediaI run an accounting firm that works with small and medium-sized businesses, which means my team spends part of every month inside Canada Revenue Agency reviews. Here is what it can look like from our side of the desk. A review that should take months stretches into years. Every so often, the file lands on a new agent, and we start over: re-explain the history, resend the documents, reargue points that were settled two agents ago. When numbers come back wrong again, we refile and wait months more.THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLYSubscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman, and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLESSubscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLESCreate an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountWhile that clock runs, other filings sit in limbo. Refunds are held. Balances under dispute keep accruing penalties and interest. Though the agency owns the delay, the meter runs on the taxpayer.Get the latest headlines, breaking news and columns.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Top Stories will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againComplaints to the Taxpayers’ Ombudsperson hit 3,558 last fiscal year, up 27 per cent from the previous year, according to the office’s annual report, released in June. The Auditor General’s own findings from last fall point in the same direction. Callers to CRA contact centres waited an average of 31 minutes, and agents answered individual tax questions accurately just 17 per cent of the time. Even on business tax and benefits questions, the agency’s own testing found agents were right only slightly more than half the time.For a business, a CRA delay is not an inconvenience. It is frozen working capital. A refund that sits for months is cash the business cannot put into inventory, payroll or growth. A disputed balance accrues interest on a timeline the business does not control, at rates no owner would accept from a lender. I have watched owners defer hiring because five figures sat in administrative limbo.Then there is the cost nobody invoices. When an agency’s own agents cannot reliably explain its rules, businesses stop relying on the agency and start paying professionals for answers the public system was supposed to provide. The quiet economics of the Auditor General’s account is that the cost of a public institution’s failure has been privatized. And it lands hardest on the smallest players: multinational have tax departments, dozen-person companies don’t.You might assume CRA’s dysfunction is good for my business. It is not. Once we file a dispute, we follow up every two weeks, sit on hold, and re-explain the situation. We billed that work once, and we do not charge clients for the agency’s delays. A second invoice for the CRA’s failure would only compound the insult. Nobody builds a firm hoping to shepherd a file to its fourth agent.There is also the distraction. In a small company, the owner’s attention is the scarcest resource on the balance sheet. Every hour spent re-explaining a file is an hour not spent on customers, staff or strategy. And the owners living this are people who follow every rule, remit every instalment and file on every deadline, but cannot get a straight answer or settled file in return. Theirs is the specific fury of a customer who pays for a service, receives dysfunction and is then charged interest for the privilege.This advertisement has not loaded yet.This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.How long would a private company survive doing business this way? A business that answered half of its customers’ questions incorrectly, held their money for months and made them start over with a new representative every quarter would bleed customers. But the CRA’s customers can’t leave. Filing taxes is not optional and there is no competitor to defect to. An institution with captive customers can ignore the cost of failing them.Yes, the volume CRA handles is enormous, the tax code it administers is genuinely complex and most of the individual agents we deal with are very professional and do try to help. But volume alone does not explain why nobody owns a file. When reviews routinely pass from agent to agent, with no continuity and no accountability for the outcome, that is a process choice, the kind that survives only where the customer has nowhere else to go.Because the market cannot discipline the CRA, accountability has to be designed in. Three fixes would do more than any budget increase.First, give every long-running file a single accountable owner, so no business starts over from zero with agent number four. Second, stop the interest clock when the delay is demonstrably the agency’s fault: charging a taxpayer for time the CRA itself consumed is indefensible. And, third, as the Taxpayers’ Ombudsperson has recommended, publish real processing-time performance against every service standard so businesses can plan around reality instead of promises.Small businesses are held to hard standards. File on time. Pay on time. Respond promptly or face penalties and interest. My clients meet those standards every day, while waiting years for the agency to meet its own. Hard standards are good. It’s time CRA was held to them, too.Daryl Ching is the founder of Vistance Accounting. We apologize, but this video has failed to load.Notice for the Postmedia NetworkThis website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.