The federal government’s tax information call centres have received a D grade on a new report card from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
The CFIB also says CRA agents provided incomplete or incorrect information in 41 per cent of the cases where its callers received an answer, compared with 31 per cent in the 2016 report card and 24 per cent in 2012.“We are also making continuous improvements to our web content, and will soon introduce a chatbot to help make it easier for Canadians to find information online,” CRA spokesman Etienne Biram said in an emailed statement.
The GST question, which has been posed in previous CFIB tests, was answered incompletely 30 per cent of the time and incorrectly 23 per cent of the time — resulting in callers receiving acceptable answers only 47 per cent of the time.Another repeat question about applying employment insurance premiums received no erroneous answers and was answered completely 51 per cent of the time and “above and beyond” in 13 per cent of the cases.
However, the CFIB says that the employment insurance and capital cost allowance questions could only be answered by a senior agent, and the average wait time for a transferred call was 59 minutes. Pohlmann says the business owners are also in a vulnerable position during an audit if the CRA call centre provides incorrect information or if the error is made by an accountant or book keeper hired by the company.
globebusiness The street thug shaking your business down for their cut each quarter would probably get a bad review in a blind survey too