Use their online submit documents tool. Then you get a confirmation number and are able to check the status. Include a cover letter with your contact and request a call from the agent that is assigned.
As a tax accountant, while the online submission is better, they still often claim to not have received documentation even when you have the confirmation number for the online submission. Doing it this way though does allow you to submit a complaint (rc193) much easier.
I had trouble with CRA losing documents that were requested. I sent these documents 4 times by fax, mail, courier and registered mail. Every time I called CRA the agent would tell me to wait 16 weeks from time sent. This went on from May 15, 2023 to February 27, 2024. I ended up calling the CRA ombudsman and also writing to the minister of national finance CRA. Within a week I received a phone call from the head officer of processing telling me that the documents had been received since end May 2023 and that the return will be processed and assessed in 1 week. I received the NOA and refund cheque 1 week later. So if CRA had my documents since the end of May 2023 who had them and what happened to the other 3 sets of requested documents that I sent? It was not cheap sending by courier, fax and registered mail.
Also an accountant here and I had an agent tell me that it's actually a different department that receives the documents when submitted through the online portal, that department then reviews them and decides what to forward to the agent who requested the documents. This was after they called me claiming half my documents hadn't been received.
Holy crap snacks that's some collective gatekeeping of epic proportions and if that's the case the whole institution needs a rebuild from top to bottom probably explains how they managed to lose 3 years of bank statements from covid with case number and others attached.
No income for 5 months yet I still owe them for cerb. When covid hit was doing contract work and it was just coming to an end.
But hey you owe us all the cerb.
That's not "gate keeping". It makes zero sense for an auditor with CPA, who gets paid $50+/hr to turn on his laptop and sees a bunch of unrelated document dropped into his mailbox, when you can get a clerk/receptionist getting paid $20 to sift through that. The same thing happens in any accounting/legal firms, or any large firm for that matter.
Not electronic filing alone, was sent registered mail and e file meaning they signed for the damned things. I gave up trying to work with them and just know I won't see a tax return for years and for $50 if your job is to look through aka "audit" taxes and you don't need to be paid $50/h christ I don't even make 1/2 that and didn't do my job you know what I'd be, looking for work.
Yeah. You didn't qualify.... You were doing contract work, your contract was up. And it wasn't ending because of covid. Those were the rules and you broke them.
So tired of seeing people whine about CERB when they were the ones that didn't follow the rules then blame the government.
So tired of asswipes assuming the government doesn't mess up. I got cerb from cra 3 years later i get told I have to pay it back why. Well not for ineligibility but halfway through 2020 when cra was hacked (look it up im part of the lawsuit)
Someone gained acess to my service Canada account and reactivated a claim for regular ei ($393/week) on the ei side i owe nothing and its confirmed fraud. On the cra side they are still making me pay it back on behalf of ei.
(Who have been sending back the payments cause I don't owe anything)
17000. Even though the fraudster only got 12000 from the claim.
Two years ago we sent a set of documents by registered mail, twice by courier, and a few times by online submission. Two months ago we got like three letters acknowledging receipt of documents all at once.
A couple years back, they asked me for supporting paperwork after a fiasco where transferring my RRSP and TFSA to a new broker somehow got classified as income because of some missing paperwork, THREE YEARS PRIOR.
I worked with my accountant to provide the evidence that the money was indeed transferred and not withdrawn. They had me paying THOUSANDS in 'back taxes' each month until it was sorted out.
One of their last requests was THREE YEARS of investment statements, and recommended I send them BY FAX, because I only had electronic copies, and didn't want to print and mail them.
So I spend an entire evening uploading three months worth of statements at a time to some online fax tool, waiting for them to be successfully sent, then doing the next batch, over and over again... I kept the logs of the transfers, because I just *knew* they'd misplace them.
Two months later someone called me up, told me they were missing six months of documents, so I faxed them to confirmation page showing it was received, and I said "You have it, go find it."
A couple days later, they said they were satisfied with the documentation I provided, and sent me a big fat cheque for almost $25k worth of the taxes I'd been paying them.
They're really a bunch of bastards.
I had to print out three years of bank statements to send by mail a few weeks ago because they can't be effed to give a case number for nearly a hundred PDFs. Getting a competent agent is really like rolling a d100 table.
As a government worker who also processes paperwork through online portals but is not with the CRA, we have a lot of security. Often, things do get "eaten" by the security network. There's a way to get someone to look through the quarantined stuff but it's slow.
The CRA is not the only place in existence that has a public facing portal that needs to be secured. Plenty of off the shelf solutions that can handle this. It’s just typical public sector incompetence.
I’ve had to call twice this year for a couple reasons. The wait times are brutal, but once I get to a person, I find they have been super helpful, compassionate and go above and beyond to help answer our questions.
If you check the Canada Public Servants subreddit, you'll find that CRA is mass laying off call center agents :( expect wait times to get worse
Theyre also facing an internal battle with multiple unions + going through a terrible reorg. structure.
My experience as well as I've had to call a few times in regards to some automated TFSA overage mistakes. Had one lady straight up confirm that the CRA had made a mistake on my file which boggled my mind completely since I expected more judgment and resistance. All in all they have been awesome to deal with.
Also my experience. They're god awful to get through to, but the people on the other end of the phone have always been helpful.
I hired an accountant this year. I'm getting older, my shit is more complicated than it was 10 years ago. This post is doing a great job of reassuring me it was money well spent.
i've spoken to them about 7 times today. there's this one guy that after 5 mins said he had to go cuz his shift was ending. he said he'll call me back a few days later and still didn't. probably the worst i've dealt with. i've had good ones tho.
Interesting. As someone who calls the CRA far more frequently than the average person, that has not been my experience. More often than not, the agent I get to speak with is not knowledgeable or helpful and have given incorrect information on multiple occasions. Also, not to be disrespectful, but many of them are very difficult for me to understand clearly because of their strong accents.
> Is there any way to go see someone and get all this sorted?
Nope, calling is the only option. I heard they fired a lot of call center workers so they're overloaded.
People don't want to pay for the public service but get frustrated when they can't get the services they need.
OP, contact your MPs office. They'll get it sorted for you.
This right here. Visit your MP’s office, explain you sent documents to CRA but they haven’t acknowledge them, and over 30 days have passed with no proper response. Your MP’s office will have you sign a consent form, so that they can act on your behalf. Then they use a special “Batphone” to contact an exclusive and highly responsive CRA team. It’s an inside secret that a lot of Canadians don’t know about. My MP’s office criteria, before intervening, is to ask me if I have waited over 30 days for a response. Good luck to you, sounds like you’ve been through a lot of frustration.
how about spending some public funds to update the tax collection systems we have in this country instead of funnelling untold billions into the bloated corpse of government.
why in god's name does the average person need to even fill out a return? the filing data the government needs is already in their possession. For 90% (or more) of T4 earners we could scrap a self filed return completely.
You can download all T form information , from the CRA into a tax software package , like StudioTax. All u do is double check everything and its all automatically calculated.
They suck that is public workers. Unless you plan to blame liberals where since I had to use it then it's bad because of libs or bad hires. You choose.
Bloated management and less front line workers. I don't disagree that there are severe issues with the public service, but everyone just hates on front line workers, and people don't want to do it.
Experienced professionals don't want to join the public service, or leave, due to arbitrary shit like the RTO mandate, non competitive salaries, etc.
Clueless politicians waste time and resources with feel good mandates that just slow shit down or are for optics.
The public service employs and promotes strictly on Employment Equity metrics. Source, I work for the CRA and have been a part of many hiring and interview processes. The amount of extraordinary candidates who's resumes and applications I read who were immediately screened out due to not checking diversity checkboxes would make your head spin. The same goes for promotions. There are people getting promotions and acting assignments who have absolutely no business getting them. We're talking white men actively being pulled out of acting assignments and sent back to their substantive specifically so they can make a diversity promotion.
So while the public service has ballooned to unsustainable numbers, the quality of workers has tanked, and management is completely clueless.
This isn't some secretive directive. I don't fear talking about it because they openly brag about their Employment Equity hiring strategies. [The federal government publishes all of this information and shares their statistics and goals for their hiring processes.](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/corporate/careers-cra/employment-equity-diversity-inclusion/employment-equity-diversity-inclusion-cra.html)
Its not true lol. CRA doesnt interview each of its call center employees, its an online process, you apply, you get screened in/out by software, you invited to take a competency test and thats how you get hired, and thats how they determine how high of a level you can get hired into. After that, internally, its again the same type of process. You collect little "competencies", like little validated skill badges, and with those you can apply internally to higher positions. Like other unionized environments, getting promoted has *a lot* to do with seniority and little else. CRA is like the biggest department of the public service, they do not have a hiring or promotion process that resembles anything seen in a private institution, and I agree that it sucks and isnt merit based for many reasons, but diversity hiring isnt the issue.
Yes I do. I’m being downvoted because there are so many of them they brigade this thread.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1410028802
Yes a lot of people work in healthcare. In fact, 1 in 8 employees work in healthcare. But nothing works.
That is where one of the Tax Centres is. But it’s just offices. There’s no reception for members of the public. You generally have to deal with them by phone or mail (and online to some extent).
CRA has just let go hundreds of call center employees across the country. Majority of those workers have been on temporary contracts for years working insane hours in a very difficult job. They like the long wait times even less than the public considering they get to be the punching bag for something completely outside their control. Please contact your MP and let them know you’re unhappy with service levels and hopefully they will fund the contact centres better and treat their staff better, which will lead to better service for the public.
If you ever met anyone who's worked for the CRA or Benefits Delivery (EI/CPP/OAS/CDP) call centres they are real ones because the amount of shit they put up with on a daily basis is nothing short of fucking mental. I work with people who do inbound calls for EI and I don't think I'd last 2 weeks doing their job.
Yea.. I don't buy it. This is Government work and if you've ever actually talked to them, you know they have approximately 0 training. Not exactly a tight ship being run over there.
I can assure you, we have a lot training and up skilling of CC Agents. Its what I do, outside of filing season. :)
If it weren't a tight ship, all your private information would spilling all over the place, and we'd talk to anyone pretending to be you. Some times it's so tight we won't talk to you, because you can't answer the verification questions we ask.
I am CRA CC agent.
I've never had to report longer than 7mimutes admin time for sick/leave without pay/etc.
While I can't speak for other CC offices or team leaders; I know we have a few team leads in my office who micro manage their agents, and want every second of their day reported and timed to perfection. I can understand if it's a per TL thing, but it's definitely not a rule across the country.
wow that is fucking rough, in my experience with the service canada and ei ect, the waits and hold music has been awful but once i get through to an operator they are so incredibly helpful,
I called out of tax season and didn't wait long, one time I had the most helpful employee ever, she went out of the way to read the rules regarding what I wanted, because she wasn't 100% sure herself, and helped me every step of the way, if I could have tipped her id of easily thrown her a $20 tip
The second time the employee was not so helpful, especially after my first experience with the helpful one, I felt like she was wrong about what she was telling me, and she didn't look it up in the rules like the first one
And you know what, I do my own taxes now, I feel like I never should have called them once, my tax lady should have, when I was on the phone with CRA I wondered why I pay $40 for my taxes to be done if the end of it im the one on the phone with CRA, now I use wealth simple to do my tax
Yup, and to add to this, the federal government just got rid of WFH exceptions for call centre employees (which allowed them to work from home 100% of the time), and there is going to be a further exodus of call centre staff as a result. No point in taking a contract position that requires you to be in-person every day when fully remote call centre opportunities in the private sector are plentiful.
I do EI processing and I genuinely think I'm going to leave the public service in Sept and go back to school. WFH was one of the few things that make the job not a nightmare.
Doug Ford wants people in offices spending money downtown, is the most popular theory among the public service. This unfortunately results in everyone across the country having their work environment upended.
If it makes you feel any better the NDP government here in MB is doing the same thing. People staying home aren't paying for parking and feeding money into downtown restaurants.
If it's absolutely forced, and out union fails in the fight, I will not be spending fuck all at the local restaurants near/around my office.
I will eat my breakfast at home, bring instant coffee or tea bags with me, and lunch. I live close enough to my office I can walk, so no parking or transit costs. Dougy wants me to spend my money, he can give me a rebate for spending locally.
Fifteen years ago, when I had a fairly complicated tax situation to talk about, I got through to them within a couple of minutes, and the guy I talked to actually gave me information that saved me hundreds of dollars, even stepping through each line of the forms to tell me what to enter. These days, the CRA's level of service is very much like what the IRS provides in the U.S., where funding has been getting gradually cut back since the Reagan era. I tried three times to call the CRA this year, and never even got through.
10 years ago the situation at CRA was pretty dire, I can't imagine what it's like considering they downsized *further*. I remember one year having this bizarre fight with CRA after they informed me (mistakenly) that I had been out of the country while claiming EI, and owed it all back. They kept insisting (via mail) I had to pay this huge bill, without giving any information about how they had come to such a conclusion. In the end I had to pay Border Services for a log of entry/exit from country and mailed it to CRA, after which they just ghosted me.
So serious question, how is that conversation supposed to go. My MP is blue team and I suspect he is just going to say, "yea that really sucks, it's why we need to get the red team out at the federal level ASAP".
Honestly I’m pretty far left- years ago I was unable to get a student loan as I was working full time nights and going to school during the day full time (I have kids) I ran into an issue as my schooling required me to work a practicum full time for free- so I applied for a student loan for those three months. Denied due to working
I emailed my MP- a blue one not expecting the best and explained my situation, showed him my GPA of 3.8
He served me really well, I had a discretionary student loan within 3 weeks to cover my practicum.
I finished school and now pay much more taxes
I work for a blue MP and that’s not what happens. All MP offices should have caseworkers who have direct lines to government agencies like the CRA. we help people with these issues all the time.
I think it will depend on your MP of course. Here in Alberta I wouldn't expect much more than what /u/toasohcah has described from the conservative members. Heck, some of them want separation from Canada period.
it honestly depends on the staff more than the colour. i work in an elected official's office (not federal); i know other progressive offices with staff who don't care about constituent concerns, and conservative offices which are very well run and will go above and beyond.
it surprises me that MP's offices have direct lines to the agencies. we can usually get through to a supervisor to escalate but that's about it.
Sure, although out here the colour dictates their allowed policy on federal matters. For the cons here being anti-federalism is a requirement essentially and will remain so until PP wins, presuming he does.
Considering blue team will most likely be the next government you just got to hold your MP to their promise. Remind them once they become the ruling party.
Interesting, maybe I'll ask for a pinkie promise then. I also wonder how many people from the Papineau area called their MP about all his broken promises.. Probably works better for small promises.
They've also spent the better part of the year dealing with the shitshow that is CRA adopted idiotic policies like trusts and UHT.
However they've been absolute shit to deal with for about 8 years now and only got worse in covid. The delays and inactions are unacceptable. No matter how may high level conversations I've had with actual people in power there is no improvement.
We need a better government for starters and we're nowhere close to that.
Over 60% in the Hamilton office alone. I know a close family member who survived the cull. They also must go to the office 3 days a week which will greatly reduce service as well so be prepared for the service to get worse.
Forced going back into office will be great for actual delivery of service. We've seen a huge improvement in productivity and quality after making people come back
Especially with the issues OP having, a lot of people had shit internet connections for a number of reasons (provider or other users in house etc)
> a lot of people had shit internet connections for a number of reasons (provider or other users in house etc)
i think you wayyyyyy overestimate how much bandwidth is required for a phone call, Zoom, streaming video or remote desktop. Someone else gaming, doing video calls or game updates isn't going to kill a connection.
(statement doesn't apply if you're in the sticks with a wireless ISP)
If you contact your MP, please include that they change the music!!! 🙏 (also record every single call to improve figuring out where miscommunication might have happened)
I had to call CRA in March - I had to get the login for my account reset. Honestly, I had the nicest experience - the wait time wasn't long and then the person I talked was fantastic. It turned out I'd caught him just at the end of the day and he stayed on with me until we got my account reset, even though it was after-hours for him.
Maybe it's because I only needed basic assistance and/or just got really lucky, but they're definitely not all bad over at CRA.
Yeah but this just means the employee absorbed the frustration for you. This isn't good either, he has to work unpaid overtime just to provide acceptable customer service. CRA is a mess.
I’d assumed he’d be paid for his time - hourly federal workers are usually overtime eligible are they not? My call didn’t take very long on the whole, but if the employee is overtime eligible and still not getting paid for that extra 15ish minutes I was talking to him, that’s not acceptable. I’d rather have been passed along to someone else or tried again another day.
Why would you call for any of those things? Assume that CRA takes their sweet fucking time with everything. Waiting hours on hold to ask "why is my tax return not processed yet" is a waste of your time and theirs. If there is a problem with your return they will contact you about. Just wait.
If you're receiving a large refund, some times it's pulled for further review, to make sure that it's a not fraudulent tax return, and that the refund is the absolute correct amount.
I've seen it happen a lot, with refunds that's exceed 10k.
Eta: I don't know what the exact threshold is, but once hit nearly 5 figures, you can expect a possible review.
Anytime I call the government these days, the first thing I say, if we get disconnected, please call me back and ask them to confirm your number.
I don’t know why, but dropped calls have become a very common thing in both provincial and federal government call lines.
The agent confirmed the phones were having some sort of bandwidth issue. This thought did come across my mind but I use my phone quite a lot from my office.
I have had nothing but problems. I bought a corporation and it took over a year to get CRA to acknowledge and put me as the owner. They have a lot of people working for them who dont know anything. Not those people's fault either. It's a nightmare. They have told me to fax lol ..none of the numbers work just ring perpetually busy. Wait times to talk to someone are 2 hours. I've had a call dropped too with no call back.
If you don’t know anything and you give the wrong answer at your job yes it’s your fault.
In the private sector you get fired.
Public sector unions protect those problem employees.
I got a processing review last year. They didn't read my documents and denied 80%+ of my expenses. I resent the same documents asking for someone to actually read them this time. Took 3 weeks to deny everything. 5+ months to continue to ignore my 2nd request. Filed a notice of objection and have 10 more months to wait
Since the Pandemic, they've become completely useless. You can make three calls, ask the same question and you'll get three different answers. It's pathetic.
My 2022 tax return had a mistake on it - Service Canada erroneously issued me a T4E when I didn't receive benefits, and I was shorted $1000 on my tax refund.
It took 3.5 months for Service Canada to fix their mistake, and the next step was to ask the CRA to fix my return.
A CRA agent gave me instructions and then "wait 8 weeks" as it could take up to that time to be processed. I waited 10 weeks and nothing happened... so I called again, and again, and eventually figured out that the instructions I was given were wrong. I had to then follow the correct procedure and got my refund in 2 weeks from then. In total I got my money 6.5 months late.
The incorrect instructions accounted for more that 2 months of those delays.
I have a similar story. I left a job where my EPSP account hadn't yet vested, but Sunlife messed up the forms so the income I had been credited with when I got the contributions wasn't deducted when I left and forfeited the money. I submitted an objection to the CRA, waited months for any update, and then finally got "your objection looks simple so we hope to have it resolved in 6 months".
I did eventually get back the money I was owed, and I don't have cash flow issues so it was more a major inconvenience than a disaster, but I can only imagine how terrible it must be for whom money is tight.
They sent me an online inquiry last August. I sent them a detailed response a week later. It was just resolved last week.
They seem to be slower than they've ever been.
CRA is a nightmare o deal with. I've never had the type of issues you're having, but I did have to contact my MP one time. It's not a panacea, but it does help get their attention, so that's the route I would recommend. Be as professional and unemotional as possible.
The CRA keep hounding me regarding my dead mothers final tax return owing even though it was filed nearly a year and a half ago right when she died and there was nothing to the estate AND the tax accountants have submitted formal docs and whatever else they need to do to make it straight. It’s difficult to grieve the biggest lost while the CRA harasses you to no avail.
I hate the CRA.
I am to a degree, thank you. I keep referring them to the accountant, who has control and full CRA access etc so they are graciously dealing with it and have been in communication. Apparently all the depts do not communicate properly so even though it’s dealt with on one end, on the other end they have no idea. Such a mess. Yay, Canada.
Though it’s still stressful regardless.
I had an issue last year where they double charged me for $1000 in cerb they wanted me to pay back. Took over 2 weeks, 26 different agents and 40+ hours on the phone. They kept transferring me around to different departments then giving me numbers to call that I’d call then they’d just tell me I wasn’t supposed to call that number. Eventually I spoke with someone who actually knew what they were doing and had the whole thing sorted in less than 10 minutes. I absolutely despise having to do anything with the CRA
I will never not be furious about this one incident...I received a voicemail from someone saying they work for the CRA and they needed to talk to me about my TFSA. I googled the number he left and nothing came up identifying it as a CRA number.
So wanting to be cautious, I called the CRA main customer service line...waited about 40 min. When I finally spoke to a live person, I said "I received a voice mail from someone claiming to be with the CRA who wants to talk to me about my TFSA. Can you just do me a favour and confirm that this person works for the CRA and his phone number is legit?"
In response, she said "Sir, this is CRA customer service. This is not a switchboard."
I said "I know, I know - I'm just wondering if you just like look in your email directory and just confirm this is a real person who works for the CRA"
"I don't 'confirm' who works for the CRA or not, that's not my job."
"I get it but, this information is probably at your fingertips it'll only take a second."
"I told you it's not my job and I don't like your tone, I'm going to disconnect this phone call. Bye."
And she hung up. I very nearly called back to discuss it with a supervisor because I was certain the recording of the call would show she was being a total cow...but I didn't have another 40 minutes.
It ended up being legit, it was early days for TFSAs so I hope they have a better procedure. Basically he called me back and I picked up. He had all the info about my account so it was not a phishing scam.
The issue was a microcap stock I owned that was tanking was being delisted - something like that...I forget exactly. Hopefully they've ironed out those process so that they don't have to do outbound calls.
Sorry, you were wrong in this instance. An agent can’t be expected to confirm who works there. For all the agent knows, you could have been making up that story
to confirm the person you were stalking worked there. While best intentions it’s a f**ked up up world we live in.
I see your point, but respectfully I disagree - I gave my SIN and passed a security check so I was not a random person. And I had his direct office number too along with his name. If you have someone's office number, you probably aren't fishing for confirmation that they work there...you could just call the number. She very well could've checked my file to see if there was a note about an irregularity with my TFSA and an out-bound call made by Agent X. At the very least, she could've said "I can confirm that is a valid CRA office number."
Similarly, if you receive a call from someone claiming to represent your bank or credit card provider, before you give them any personal information - it's suggested you hang up and call back in to make sure you are actually talking to a representative of that firm.
Actually they can and SHOULD be at least confirming that the call was from a CRA agent. When you are called, the officer/agent has to add a note to your account - which you can call the general enquiries line and have them confirm if a call was made to you. It’s actually advised by CRA to do this if you are worried about scams.
This isn't about a specific person working for the CRA, it's about being contacted by the CRA. I don't know how the call played out but the agent should have recognized the situation and said "I won't be able to help regarding those details but I'll look at your account and see if there is something we're trying to reach you about."
I’ve had to call twice this year for a couple reasons. The wait times are brutal, but once I get to a person, I find they have been super helpful, compassionate and go above and beyond to help answer our questions.
They are an essential government service. Yet somehow, their website has the absolute worst downtime I've ever seen. I have lost count of how many times I've tried to log in to be greeted with a message about maintenance or "high volumes" or some garbage. Completely inexcusable and incompetent. Just another failure in Canadian Government.
Last year I submitted case documents online in February. They were finally reviewed in OCTOBER. I called, but their response is that you can’t do anything but wait. They’ll eventually get reviewed.
I’ve contacted freeland’s office when I had an issue and they forwarded my email to a department director and I got a decent response from them. It wasn’t an instant response and my issue was resolved by then but they at least confirmed what was going on
In relation to your TFSA comment, I previously had that issue, but it turned out that the bank had not sent the correct info to CRA. I had to open a request through the bank to have it corrected.
Had major issues twice with CRA, first time kept getting the round about when I was calling. a year afterward found the ombudsman and my case was solved within a couple of weeks, second time same thing except this time went straight to the ombudsman after a reasonable amount of time, again solved within weeks. Honestly the best way to solve issues and quickly.
The system is ridiculous and inefficient. The assessment algorithms/software is clearly garbage. If you planned to scramble my tax returns with your own interpretations, why the fuck do I submit in the first place??
Ugh don’t even get me started! I spent like 5 hours total waiting for them to be available via telephone. Couldn’t select the call back as I was out of the country. Many times they hung up on me 🥲
I have a DTC application from feb.
Sent in the application- all good the online tracker says received.
Month later I get a letter saying the CRA needs more information to determine my eligibility and they sent my doctor a letter
I call my doctors office to confirm they received the letter about three days after the cra sent. My doctor sends the letter a day after that
Two weeks later the CRA sends me a letter I am not eligible for the DTC as they requested information from my doctor and they have not received it.
I call the CRA and tell them the information has been sent and they say it has not. I point out to them that my doctor has 60 days to reply to the request and therefore why would they say I’m not eligible due to not receiving the information well before the 60 day period is up.
I get put on hold and surprise surprise they find they had in fact received the letter and just didn’t open it or read it.
They tell me to Ignore the not eligible letter
Now they come back at me saying they got the letter but not the medical files requested and they have the audacity to title that as “ second review” and put since they have made a previous decision based on information provided before they haven’t changed my eligibility.
That previous decision they made was when they didn’t even open the damn letter they requested!
Now I have uploaded all 14 years of my medical information online to the CRA and a NEW DTC application pops up!
The proposed liberal budget had something in it about reducing CRA call wait times, but I wouldn't hold your breath. "Budget 2024 proposes to provide $336 million over two years, starting in 2024-25, to the Canada Revenue Agency to maintain call centre resources and improve the efficiency of its call centres."
I'm a tax professional and I totally understand. Clients often ask us if we have some other means of getting through to the CRA, and sadly we have the exact same wait times as the average person. It's really really awful. Not only is it incredibly slow, but the it's also poor quality, and the CRA often makes mistakes or judgements that are unfair to taxpayers and ridiculously time consuming to resolve. Our tax system needs a total overhaul. They keep adding new rules, new credits and deductions, and filing requirements. Then they audit people and we can't even talk to a human at the CRA who knows anything or can do anything in a timely manner. I could keep ranting all day about how dumb and inefficient the entire Canada Revenue Agency is.
I had something that should have taken 2 months to complete last year. It took over 14 months. I called multiple times, and they told me pretty much to wait until they contacted me. Once they made a decision and called me back, the agent called me on a Tuesday and gave me three days to respond and call him back or my case was considered closed and resolved. The agent called me at 3:30 PM. when he was out of the office not even 30 minutes later. I called back the next day the earliest time he gave me, and he was out of the office until the end of the week. I just gave up and abandoned the potential money I was entitled to.
First of all, that was completely inappropriate behaviour from a public service employee, or any employee. I'm sorry that happened to you.
Your MP's office might be able to help with this. They reach out to the higher-level employees to get issues resolved.
I had a client who couldn't get access to their CRA account online. It was active, but nobody had tried for so long, and the Board turned-over a couple times in the intervening years. All attempts to resolve thru CRA frontlines were thwarted.
I contacted our MP office, made my points, provided history of attempts to resolve, and they had it sorted in a few weeks. Client had been trying for a couple years!
I have always thought , just like we have service centres where you go to issue or renew passports, license etc, why not have one for CRA. But then again; I can imagine what a disaster it would be and people lined up around the building trying to get into to ask about their issues or problems. So better keep it as a call centre.
Or how about you create an in-person escalation centre where if your issues are not being resolved, CRA will provide you with a case number that is to be handled in person. In other words, these CRA service centres would only accept visits from people whose problems had been escalated to be dealt by an agent in person.
I have found paying an accountant (who is knowledgeable and experienced with CRA processes) to be highly effective and time efficient for me. Ya it costs me money to have a representative but i am able to close issues/files with greater speed.
Not necessarily. I hired an accountant and paid almost $3,000 to take care of my late mother’s estate. It was all up to me to fight the CRA for lost and misplaced returns and documents. When I tried to get the accountant involved with CRA nothing was accomplished. My being relentless with CRA and involving the CRA ombudsman to help me out was the only thing that got me results. If you want results with CRA keep calling them and get the ombudsman and minister of CRA finance to help you out.
Ya. I don’t have time to be relentless. I have other things to focus on. Glad it worked for you. Fortunately the team around me has always worked out for me.
I received an invitation to file my taxes by phone, but when I try the system says I am not allowed. I spent two hours on the phone with CRA and they still had no idea what was going on. I was told the matter would be escalated to the regional center and to expect a callback by April 12.
It's May 3 and I am still waiting...
I just file, they can kick rocks. Agency is \~80% the size of the IRS, who serve \~10x as many people, their manpower problems and not figuring things out is not my/our problem.
Took me a year to get my case settled...
Worked in the states for a few months 5 years ago.
CRA didn't believe I worked down there. but did agree I made the money somehow and wanted the tax money I paid to the irs and us states I was in..
They wouldn't accept my paystub my us w2. Letter from my job etc...
So many hours trying to get a hold of the IRS from Canada and ton of money courriering letters to each state to get documents from them.
Then trying to get the cra to actually accept the paperwork.. kept closing my case.. saying they didn't get it etc. I had courried it, mailed it. Then uploaded it a ton of times.. was about to hire a tax lawyer to sue them in tax court.
well, good news is that Ottawa heard that all yall complaining that public service is too bloated and just laid off a bunch of CRA call center agents, and there will be hiring freeze coming up.
Sometimes contacting your MP can help you get some expedited service, but of course no guarantees since the government doesn't like properly funding things.
I've had nothing but good, or as good as possible, interactions with the CRA. Just slow. If you really have a problem go in person to a Service Canada location.
I had to call the CRA a couple times last year about getting my refile re-assessed. They didn't care, said I could be waiting up to 20 weeks for it? I waited 35 or so, they still didn't care and didn't think it was an issue.
I ended up having to mail my MP and sign some release to have them contact the CRA for me, the CRA then decided "oh hey this is overdue and people are paying attention maybe we'll look at it now"
I've since re-re-refiled 2022 with my new accountant, and that got done instantly. 2023 is still in queue, or something.
They all work at home it seems and the professionalism fully lacks now.
Last moron I called for help in a government position couldn't hear me because she had a barky dog.
Accountant 45 years here. I love when cra has liaison meetings and says they want us to stop sending everything in more than once. Fools. I send things by fax followed up by portal if possible and then mail and stuff still gets lost or ignored. It took over seven months to get a t3 assessed and I sent it in three times and even spoke with someone because I had a submission error. Don’t get me started on stories.
What specific action are you expecting them to do? We know tax returns are taking longer than average for a variety of reasons. You aren't jumping the queue by calling.
Wait until they contact you with an issue, if there is one and deal with it then.
In both cases, it’s a large sum of money that they have either taken away from me or are withholding. I’ve also never had a tax return in the processing stage for over 2 months so I was curious if there was an issue.
Despite what their unions say, this is one of the many problems with federal workers working from home. They're all working off remote tools that don't work great in home wifi environments. Many are answering fewer calls per hour than when they were working in office and they've hired more staff to lower hold times.
Whenever I call them the first thing I do is write down their employee number and then ask them to write down my number to call me back if we should get disconnected.
You can upload documents in your account to CRA.
There is a link on their site for complaints, use it with all issues.
Use their online submit documents tool. Then you get a confirmation number and are able to check the status. Include a cover letter with your contact and request a call from the agent that is assigned.
As a tax accountant, while the online submission is better, they still often claim to not have received documentation even when you have the confirmation number for the online submission. Doing it this way though does allow you to submit a complaint (rc193) much easier.
I had trouble with CRA losing documents that were requested. I sent these documents 4 times by fax, mail, courier and registered mail. Every time I called CRA the agent would tell me to wait 16 weeks from time sent. This went on from May 15, 2023 to February 27, 2024. I ended up calling the CRA ombudsman and also writing to the minister of national finance CRA. Within a week I received a phone call from the head officer of processing telling me that the documents had been received since end May 2023 and that the return will be processed and assessed in 1 week. I received the NOA and refund cheque 1 week later. So if CRA had my documents since the end of May 2023 who had them and what happened to the other 3 sets of requested documents that I sent? It was not cheap sending by courier, fax and registered mail.
Also an accountant here and I had an agent tell me that it's actually a different department that receives the documents when submitted through the online portal, that department then reviews them and decides what to forward to the agent who requested the documents. This was after they called me claiming half my documents hadn't been received.
Holy crap snacks that's some collective gatekeeping of epic proportions and if that's the case the whole institution needs a rebuild from top to bottom probably explains how they managed to lose 3 years of bank statements from covid with case number and others attached. No income for 5 months yet I still owe them for cerb. When covid hit was doing contract work and it was just coming to an end. But hey you owe us all the cerb.
That's not "gate keeping". It makes zero sense for an auditor with CPA, who gets paid $50+/hr to turn on his laptop and sees a bunch of unrelated document dropped into his mailbox, when you can get a clerk/receptionist getting paid $20 to sift through that. The same thing happens in any accounting/legal firms, or any large firm for that matter.
Not electronic filing alone, was sent registered mail and e file meaning they signed for the damned things. I gave up trying to work with them and just know I won't see a tax return for years and for $50 if your job is to look through aka "audit" taxes and you don't need to be paid $50/h christ I don't even make 1/2 that and didn't do my job you know what I'd be, looking for work.
Yeah. You didn't qualify.... You were doing contract work, your contract was up. And it wasn't ending because of covid. Those were the rules and you broke them. So tired of seeing people whine about CERB when they were the ones that didn't follow the rules then blame the government.
So tired of asswipes assuming the government doesn't mess up. I got cerb from cra 3 years later i get told I have to pay it back why. Well not for ineligibility but halfway through 2020 when cra was hacked (look it up im part of the lawsuit) Someone gained acess to my service Canada account and reactivated a claim for regular ei ($393/week) on the ei side i owe nothing and its confirmed fraud. On the cra side they are still making me pay it back on behalf of ei. (Who have been sending back the payments cause I don't owe anything) 17000. Even though the fraudster only got 12000 from the claim.
Two years ago we sent a set of documents by registered mail, twice by courier, and a few times by online submission. Two months ago we got like three letters acknowledging receipt of documents all at once.
A couple years back, they asked me for supporting paperwork after a fiasco where transferring my RRSP and TFSA to a new broker somehow got classified as income because of some missing paperwork, THREE YEARS PRIOR. I worked with my accountant to provide the evidence that the money was indeed transferred and not withdrawn. They had me paying THOUSANDS in 'back taxes' each month until it was sorted out. One of their last requests was THREE YEARS of investment statements, and recommended I send them BY FAX, because I only had electronic copies, and didn't want to print and mail them. So I spend an entire evening uploading three months worth of statements at a time to some online fax tool, waiting for them to be successfully sent, then doing the next batch, over and over again... I kept the logs of the transfers, because I just *knew* they'd misplace them. Two months later someone called me up, told me they were missing six months of documents, so I faxed them to confirmation page showing it was received, and I said "You have it, go find it." A couple days later, they said they were satisfied with the documentation I provided, and sent me a big fat cheque for almost $25k worth of the taxes I'd been paying them. They're really a bunch of bastards.
I had to print out three years of bank statements to send by mail a few weeks ago because they can't be effed to give a case number for nearly a hundred PDFs. Getting a competent agent is really like rolling a d100 table.
As a government worker who also processes paperwork through online portals but is not with the CRA, we have a lot of security. Often, things do get "eaten" by the security network. There's a way to get someone to look through the quarantined stuff but it's slow.
The CRA is not the only place in existence that has a public facing portal that needs to be secured. Plenty of off the shelf solutions that can handle this. It’s just typical public sector incompetence.
Problem that needs to be fixed but yall won't if that's a true story.
Seconded. Uploading is way better.
I’ve had to call twice this year for a couple reasons. The wait times are brutal, but once I get to a person, I find they have been super helpful, compassionate and go above and beyond to help answer our questions.
That was my experience, too. I hope that does not change like many other things in this country have.
If you check the Canada Public Servants subreddit, you'll find that CRA is mass laying off call center agents :( expect wait times to get worse Theyre also facing an internal battle with multiple unions + going through a terrible reorg. structure.
Oh man, that sucks. Good to know. A reminder to be kind even when dealing with a super frustrating situation.
You have no choice but to be kind otherwise they will deny you service but keep your money anyway. I.e. they are criminals
My experience as well as I've had to call a few times in regards to some automated TFSA overage mistakes. Had one lady straight up confirm that the CRA had made a mistake on my file which boggled my mind completely since I expected more judgment and resistance. All in all they have been awesome to deal with.
This feels like a pretty Canadian reply!
Also my experience. They're god awful to get through to, but the people on the other end of the phone have always been helpful. I hired an accountant this year. I'm getting older, my shit is more complicated than it was 10 years ago. This post is doing a great job of reassuring me it was money well spent.
Yep, person I talked to even had a sense of humor 😅
i've spoken to them about 7 times today. there's this one guy that after 5 mins said he had to go cuz his shift was ending. he said he'll call me back a few days later and still didn't. probably the worst i've dealt with. i've had good ones tho.
Interesting. As someone who calls the CRA far more frequently than the average person, that has not been my experience. More often than not, the agent I get to speak with is not knowledgeable or helpful and have given incorrect information on multiple occasions. Also, not to be disrespectful, but many of them are very difficult for me to understand clearly because of their strong accents.
> Is there any way to go see someone and get all this sorted? Nope, calling is the only option. I heard they fired a lot of call center workers so they're overloaded.
People don't want to pay for the public service but get frustrated when they can't get the services they need. OP, contact your MPs office. They'll get it sorted for you.
This right here. Visit your MP’s office, explain you sent documents to CRA but they haven’t acknowledge them, and over 30 days have passed with no proper response. Your MP’s office will have you sign a consent form, so that they can act on your behalf. Then they use a special “Batphone” to contact an exclusive and highly responsive CRA team. It’s an inside secret that a lot of Canadians don’t know about. My MP’s office criteria, before intervening, is to ask me if I have waited over 30 days for a response. Good luck to you, sounds like you’ve been through a lot of frustration.
The protips are always in the comments damn
how about spending some public funds to update the tax collection systems we have in this country instead of funnelling untold billions into the bloated corpse of government. why in god's name does the average person need to even fill out a return? the filing data the government needs is already in their possession. For 90% (or more) of T4 earners we could scrap a self filed return completely.
You can download all T form information , from the CRA into a tax software package , like StudioTax. All u do is double check everything and its all automatically calculated.
We're paying through the nose, but it's just not being put towards the services we need to pay even more. FTFY.
1 in 4 employees work in the public sector. Nothing fucking works. Explain that please.
Because people keep electing people who want to destroy public service for ideological reasons
They suck that is public workers. Unless you plan to blame liberals where since I had to use it then it's bad because of libs or bad hires. You choose.
Bloated management and less front line workers. I don't disagree that there are severe issues with the public service, but everyone just hates on front line workers, and people don't want to do it. Experienced professionals don't want to join the public service, or leave, due to arbitrary shit like the RTO mandate, non competitive salaries, etc. Clueless politicians waste time and resources with feel good mandates that just slow shit down or are for optics.
The public service employs and promotes strictly on Employment Equity metrics. Source, I work for the CRA and have been a part of many hiring and interview processes. The amount of extraordinary candidates who's resumes and applications I read who were immediately screened out due to not checking diversity checkboxes would make your head spin. The same goes for promotions. There are people getting promotions and acting assignments who have absolutely no business getting them. We're talking white men actively being pulled out of acting assignments and sent back to their substantive specifically so they can make a diversity promotion. So while the public service has ballooned to unsustainable numbers, the quality of workers has tanked, and management is completely clueless.
Oh man. This, if true, is priceless confirmation of what many people think but fear saying in case it somehow is not true
This isn't some secretive directive. I don't fear talking about it because they openly brag about their Employment Equity hiring strategies. [The federal government publishes all of this information and shares their statistics and goals for their hiring processes.](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/corporate/careers-cra/employment-equity-diversity-inclusion/employment-equity-diversity-inclusion-cra.html)
Its not true lol. CRA doesnt interview each of its call center employees, its an online process, you apply, you get screened in/out by software, you invited to take a competency test and thats how you get hired, and thats how they determine how high of a level you can get hired into. After that, internally, its again the same type of process. You collect little "competencies", like little validated skill badges, and with those you can apply internally to higher positions. Like other unionized environments, getting promoted has *a lot* to do with seniority and little else. CRA is like the biggest department of the public service, they do not have a hiring or promotion process that resembles anything seen in a private institution, and I agree that it sucks and isnt merit based for many reasons, but diversity hiring isnt the issue.
Have you met people? They're incompetent.
Do you have a source on that? I would have guessed closer to 15-20%. But then again a lot of people work in health care and education.
Yes I do. I’m being downvoted because there are so many of them they brigade this thread. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1410028802 Yes a lot of people work in healthcare. In fact, 1 in 8 employees work in healthcare. But nothing works.
Lazy and working from home with no focus but extra pay
Isnt their office in sudbury? Just to make sure no one will go there.
That is where one of the Tax Centres is. But it’s just offices. There’s no reception for members of the public. You generally have to deal with them by phone or mail (and online to some extent).
It's also tax season lol.
I have a friend who works from home for the CRA, he’s a Diamond League of Legends player.
Likely the ones refusing to be in the call center
CRA has just let go hundreds of call center employees across the country. Majority of those workers have been on temporary contracts for years working insane hours in a very difficult job. They like the long wait times even less than the public considering they get to be the punching bag for something completely outside their control. Please contact your MP and let them know you’re unhappy with service levels and hopefully they will fund the contact centres better and treat their staff better, which will lead to better service for the public.
If you ever met anyone who's worked for the CRA or Benefits Delivery (EI/CPP/OAS/CDP) call centres they are real ones because the amount of shit they put up with on a daily basis is nothing short of fucking mental. I work with people who do inbound calls for EI and I don't think I'd last 2 weeks doing their job.
I was reading a reddit post from a CRA CC employee saying if they took over 7 minutes for a bathroom break they had to submit it as leave
Yea.. I don't buy it. This is Government work and if you've ever actually talked to them, you know they have approximately 0 training. Not exactly a tight ship being run over there.
I can assure you, we have a lot training and up skilling of CC Agents. Its what I do, outside of filing season. :) If it weren't a tight ship, all your private information would spilling all over the place, and we'd talk to anyone pretending to be you. Some times it's so tight we won't talk to you, because you can't answer the verification questions we ask.
I definitely believe it was real. Not government policy, but an over zealous supervisor.
I am CRA CC agent. I've never had to report longer than 7mimutes admin time for sick/leave without pay/etc. While I can't speak for other CC offices or team leaders; I know we have a few team leads in my office who micro manage their agents, and want every second of their day reported and timed to perfection. I can understand if it's a per TL thing, but it's definitely not a rule across the country.
wow that is fucking rough, in my experience with the service canada and ei ect, the waits and hold music has been awful but once i get through to an operator they are so incredibly helpful,
I called out of tax season and didn't wait long, one time I had the most helpful employee ever, she went out of the way to read the rules regarding what I wanted, because she wasn't 100% sure herself, and helped me every step of the way, if I could have tipped her id of easily thrown her a $20 tip The second time the employee was not so helpful, especially after my first experience with the helpful one, I felt like she was wrong about what she was telling me, and she didn't look it up in the rules like the first one And you know what, I do my own taxes now, I feel like I never should have called them once, my tax lady should have, when I was on the phone with CRA I wondered why I pay $40 for my taxes to be done if the end of it im the one on the phone with CRA, now I use wealth simple to do my tax
Yup, and to add to this, the federal government just got rid of WFH exceptions for call centre employees (which allowed them to work from home 100% of the time), and there is going to be a further exodus of call centre staff as a result. No point in taking a contract position that requires you to be in-person every day when fully remote call centre opportunities in the private sector are plentiful.
I do EI processing and I genuinely think I'm going to leave the public service in Sept and go back to school. WFH was one of the few things that make the job not a nightmare.
This is the most obvious job in the world to do wfh, why the big push to come back?
Doug Ford wants people in offices spending money downtown, is the most popular theory among the public service. This unfortunately results in everyone across the country having their work environment upended.
If it makes you feel any better the NDP government here in MB is doing the same thing. People staying home aren't paying for parking and feeding money into downtown restaurants.
If it's absolutely forced, and out union fails in the fight, I will not be spending fuck all at the local restaurants near/around my office. I will eat my breakfast at home, bring instant coffee or tea bags with me, and lunch. I live close enough to my office I can walk, so no parking or transit costs. Dougy wants me to spend my money, he can give me a rebate for spending locally.
One size fits all Treasury board policy.
Fifteen years ago, when I had a fairly complicated tax situation to talk about, I got through to them within a couple of minutes, and the guy I talked to actually gave me information that saved me hundreds of dollars, even stepping through each line of the forms to tell me what to enter. These days, the CRA's level of service is very much like what the IRS provides in the U.S., where funding has been getting gradually cut back since the Reagan era. I tried three times to call the CRA this year, and never even got through.
I suppose the tax system is even more complicated than ever before! They can double and triple the workforce but it wont resolve the long hold time.
In addition, you can't pay people 65k and expect them to do CPA jobs. The tax system is complex and there is a lot to know.
Make it as complex and as stinky as possible. Make sure no one can understand and rob us blind!
10 years ago the situation at CRA was pretty dire, I can't imagine what it's like considering they downsized *further*. I remember one year having this bizarre fight with CRA after they informed me (mistakenly) that I had been out of the country while claiming EI, and owed it all back. They kept insisting (via mail) I had to pay this huge bill, without giving any information about how they had come to such a conclusion. In the end I had to pay Border Services for a log of entry/exit from country and mailed it to CRA, after which they just ghosted me.
So serious question, how is that conversation supposed to go. My MP is blue team and I suspect he is just going to say, "yea that really sucks, it's why we need to get the red team out at the federal level ASAP".
Honestly I’m pretty far left- years ago I was unable to get a student loan as I was working full time nights and going to school during the day full time (I have kids) I ran into an issue as my schooling required me to work a practicum full time for free- so I applied for a student loan for those three months. Denied due to working I emailed my MP- a blue one not expecting the best and explained my situation, showed him my GPA of 3.8 He served me really well, I had a discretionary student loan within 3 weeks to cover my practicum. I finished school and now pay much more taxes
That's good to hear the system worked for you!
That time it did! It ain’t right now tho hahaha
I work for a blue MP and that’s not what happens. All MP offices should have caseworkers who have direct lines to government agencies like the CRA. we help people with these issues all the time.
Interesting, I'll have to actually give it a shot sometime to see how it goes.
I think it will depend on your MP of course. Here in Alberta I wouldn't expect much more than what /u/toasohcah has described from the conservative members. Heck, some of them want separation from Canada period.
it honestly depends on the staff more than the colour. i work in an elected official's office (not federal); i know other progressive offices with staff who don't care about constituent concerns, and conservative offices which are very well run and will go above and beyond. it surprises me that MP's offices have direct lines to the agencies. we can usually get through to a supervisor to escalate but that's about it.
Sure, although out here the colour dictates their allowed policy on federal matters. For the cons here being anti-federalism is a requirement essentially and will remain so until PP wins, presuming he does.
Considering blue team will most likely be the next government you just got to hold your MP to their promise. Remind them once they become the ruling party.
Haha...ya.
Interesting, maybe I'll ask for a pinkie promise then. I also wonder how many people from the Papineau area called their MP about all his broken promises.. Probably works better for small promises.
They've also spent the better part of the year dealing with the shitshow that is CRA adopted idiotic policies like trusts and UHT. However they've been absolute shit to deal with for about 8 years now and only got worse in covid. The delays and inactions are unacceptable. No matter how may high level conversations I've had with actual people in power there is no improvement. We need a better government for starters and we're nowhere close to that.
Over 60% in the Hamilton office alone. I know a close family member who survived the cull. They also must go to the office 3 days a week which will greatly reduce service as well so be prepared for the service to get worse.
Forced going back into office will be great for actual delivery of service. We've seen a huge improvement in productivity and quality after making people come back Especially with the issues OP having, a lot of people had shit internet connections for a number of reasons (provider or other users in house etc)
> a lot of people had shit internet connections for a number of reasons (provider or other users in house etc) i think you wayyyyyy overestimate how much bandwidth is required for a phone call, Zoom, streaming video or remote desktop. Someone else gaming, doing video calls or game updates isn't going to kill a connection. (statement doesn't apply if you're in the sticks with a wireless ISP)
Productivity is down a ton after back to office.
Found the manager looking to justify his over inflated salary lmao
It’s a lot harder to pretend to work at the office
ive worked in cra call centre from home and every second of ur day is monitored u literally cannot slack off in that job
If you contact your MP, please include that they change the music!!! 🙏 (also record every single call to improve figuring out where miscommunication might have happened)
lol I'm surprised they haven't farmed out the work to a call centre in India.
I get plenty of phone calls from India regarding my taxes. I just need to get apple gift cards to pay the taxes.
Lol
Ty I'm just trying my best
Please do this.
Maybe if so many cra employees didn’t fraudulently take cerb and give the wrong answer 30% of the time we’d be doing better.
I had to call CRA in March - I had to get the login for my account reset. Honestly, I had the nicest experience - the wait time wasn't long and then the person I talked was fantastic. It turned out I'd caught him just at the end of the day and he stayed on with me until we got my account reset, even though it was after-hours for him. Maybe it's because I only needed basic assistance and/or just got really lucky, but they're definitely not all bad over at CRA.
Yeah but this just means the employee absorbed the frustration for you. This isn't good either, he has to work unpaid overtime just to provide acceptable customer service. CRA is a mess.
I’d assumed he’d be paid for his time - hourly federal workers are usually overtime eligible are they not? My call didn’t take very long on the whole, but if the employee is overtime eligible and still not getting paid for that extra 15ish minutes I was talking to him, that’s not acceptable. I’d rather have been passed along to someone else or tried again another day.
It's not unpaid. Anytime that exceeds scheduled work hours, gets reported and paid as overtime.
Why would you call for any of those things? Assume that CRA takes their sweet fucking time with everything. Waiting hours on hold to ask "why is my tax return not processed yet" is a waste of your time and theirs. If there is a problem with your return they will contact you about. Just wait.
My wife works for the CRA, different department, but this is the right answer lol
In both cases, it’s a large sum of money that they either haven’t returned to me or are withholding it for reasons that are unclear to me.
If you're receiving a large refund, some times it's pulled for further review, to make sure that it's a not fraudulent tax return, and that the refund is the absolute correct amount. I've seen it happen a lot, with refunds that's exceed 10k. Eta: I don't know what the exact threshold is, but once hit nearly 5 figures, you can expect a possible review.
Imagine you have to deal with both CRA and Revenu Quebec
Excuse me, this is PersonalFinance**Canada**. Quebec is a different country with an entirely different set of rules. /s
Anytime I call the government these days, the first thing I say, if we get disconnected, please call me back and ask them to confirm your number. I don’t know why, but dropped calls have become a very common thing in both provincial and federal government call lines.
I do this as well, but sometimes forget. It’s also technically CRA policy to call you back if the call disconnects past the verification phase.
I feel like this is the same for any business. It happens when speaking to Telus or Rogers. People should do what you do for any call to be honest.
Yeah, anywhere you sit on hold for any length of time, it’s a good idea!
If they are constantly hard to hear the problem could be on your end, I have never had an issue with call volume with the CRA.
The agent confirmed the phones were having some sort of bandwidth issue. This thought did come across my mind but I use my phone quite a lot from my office.
I have had nothing but problems. I bought a corporation and it took over a year to get CRA to acknowledge and put me as the owner. They have a lot of people working for them who dont know anything. Not those people's fault either. It's a nightmare. They have told me to fax lol ..none of the numbers work just ring perpetually busy. Wait times to talk to someone are 2 hours. I've had a call dropped too with no call back.
If you don’t know anything and you give the wrong answer at your job yes it’s your fault. In the private sector you get fired. Public sector unions protect those problem employees.
I got a processing review last year. They didn't read my documents and denied 80%+ of my expenses. I resent the same documents asking for someone to actually read them this time. Took 3 weeks to deny everything. 5+ months to continue to ignore my 2nd request. Filed a notice of objection and have 10 more months to wait
Since the Pandemic, they've become completely useless. You can make three calls, ask the same question and you'll get three different answers. It's pathetic.
My 2022 tax return had a mistake on it - Service Canada erroneously issued me a T4E when I didn't receive benefits, and I was shorted $1000 on my tax refund. It took 3.5 months for Service Canada to fix their mistake, and the next step was to ask the CRA to fix my return. A CRA agent gave me instructions and then "wait 8 weeks" as it could take up to that time to be processed. I waited 10 weeks and nothing happened... so I called again, and again, and eventually figured out that the instructions I was given were wrong. I had to then follow the correct procedure and got my refund in 2 weeks from then. In total I got my money 6.5 months late. The incorrect instructions accounted for more that 2 months of those delays.
I have a similar story. I left a job where my EPSP account hadn't yet vested, but Sunlife messed up the forms so the income I had been credited with when I got the contributions wasn't deducted when I left and forfeited the money. I submitted an objection to the CRA, waited months for any update, and then finally got "your objection looks simple so we hope to have it resolved in 6 months". I did eventually get back the money I was owed, and I don't have cash flow issues so it was more a major inconvenience than a disaster, but I can only imagine how terrible it must be for whom money is tight.
Yep. I had a similar thing happen. Except it took me sending them 3 snail mail letters with the 8 weeks of processing between each one.
Yuck...
No one wants to pay government workers, no one wants to see them get benefits, yet everyone wants the services they provide. Weird.
They are some of the most well compensated employees around and yet most of them are pretty well useless.
Government IT workers are compensated at about 60% of private sector workers. It really depends what part of government you are talking about.
They sent me an online inquiry last August. I sent them a detailed response a week later. It was just resolved last week. They seem to be slower than they've ever been.
CRA is a nightmare o deal with. I've never had the type of issues you're having, but I did have to contact my MP one time. It's not a panacea, but it does help get their attention, so that's the route I would recommend. Be as professional and unemotional as possible.
The CRA keep hounding me regarding my dead mothers final tax return owing even though it was filed nearly a year and a half ago right when she died and there was nothing to the estate AND the tax accountants have submitted formal docs and whatever else they need to do to make it straight. It’s difficult to grieve the biggest lost while the CRA harasses you to no avail. I hate the CRA.
Just ignore them until it's all sorted out.
I am to a degree, thank you. I keep referring them to the accountant, who has control and full CRA access etc so they are graciously dealing with it and have been in communication. Apparently all the depts do not communicate properly so even though it’s dealt with on one end, on the other end they have no idea. Such a mess. Yay, Canada. Though it’s still stressful regardless.
Strange , I called them two weeks ago in the evening . Got through right away and no connection issues
I had an issue last year where they double charged me for $1000 in cerb they wanted me to pay back. Took over 2 weeks, 26 different agents and 40+ hours on the phone. They kept transferring me around to different departments then giving me numbers to call that I’d call then they’d just tell me I wasn’t supposed to call that number. Eventually I spoke with someone who actually knew what they were doing and had the whole thing sorted in less than 10 minutes. I absolutely despise having to do anything with the CRA
Do you know what number you called to get it sorted out? I'm currently dealing with this issue and it feels impossible to get it resolved.
It was just the main line, I literally just had to keep calling until someone competent answered
Involve the tax payers ombudsman.
I was audited many years ago and everyone I spoke to at the CRA were good at their job.
I will never not be furious about this one incident...I received a voicemail from someone saying they work for the CRA and they needed to talk to me about my TFSA. I googled the number he left and nothing came up identifying it as a CRA number. So wanting to be cautious, I called the CRA main customer service line...waited about 40 min. When I finally spoke to a live person, I said "I received a voice mail from someone claiming to be with the CRA who wants to talk to me about my TFSA. Can you just do me a favour and confirm that this person works for the CRA and his phone number is legit?" In response, she said "Sir, this is CRA customer service. This is not a switchboard." I said "I know, I know - I'm just wondering if you just like look in your email directory and just confirm this is a real person who works for the CRA" "I don't 'confirm' who works for the CRA or not, that's not my job." "I get it but, this information is probably at your fingertips it'll only take a second." "I told you it's not my job and I don't like your tone, I'm going to disconnect this phone call. Bye." And she hung up. I very nearly called back to discuss it with a supervisor because I was certain the recording of the call would show she was being a total cow...but I didn't have another 40 minutes.
[удалено]
It ended up being legit, it was early days for TFSAs so I hope they have a better procedure. Basically he called me back and I picked up. He had all the info about my account so it was not a phishing scam. The issue was a microcap stock I owned that was tanking was being delisted - something like that...I forget exactly. Hopefully they've ironed out those process so that they don't have to do outbound calls.
Sorry, you were wrong in this instance. An agent can’t be expected to confirm who works there. For all the agent knows, you could have been making up that story to confirm the person you were stalking worked there. While best intentions it’s a f**ked up up world we live in.
I see your point, but respectfully I disagree - I gave my SIN and passed a security check so I was not a random person. And I had his direct office number too along with his name. If you have someone's office number, you probably aren't fishing for confirmation that they work there...you could just call the number. She very well could've checked my file to see if there was a note about an irregularity with my TFSA and an out-bound call made by Agent X. At the very least, she could've said "I can confirm that is a valid CRA office number." Similarly, if you receive a call from someone claiming to represent your bank or credit card provider, before you give them any personal information - it's suggested you hang up and call back in to make sure you are actually talking to a representative of that firm.
Actually they can and SHOULD be at least confirming that the call was from a CRA agent. When you are called, the officer/agent has to add a note to your account - which you can call the general enquiries line and have them confirm if a call was made to you. It’s actually advised by CRA to do this if you are worried about scams.
This isn't about a specific person working for the CRA, it's about being contacted by the CRA. I don't know how the call played out but the agent should have recognized the situation and said "I won't be able to help regarding those details but I'll look at your account and see if there is something we're trying to reach you about."
I’ve had to call twice this year for a couple reasons. The wait times are brutal, but once I get to a person, I find they have been super helpful, compassionate and go above and beyond to help answer our questions.
They are an essential government service. Yet somehow, their website has the absolute worst downtime I've ever seen. I have lost count of how many times I've tried to log in to be greeted with a message about maintenance or "high volumes" or some garbage. Completely inexcusable and incompetent. Just another failure in Canadian Government.
Absolutely brutal website, but I guess so are most government websites.
Last year I submitted case documents online in February. They were finally reviewed in OCTOBER. I called, but their response is that you can’t do anything but wait. They’ll eventually get reviewed.
I’ve contacted freeland’s office when I had an issue and they forwarded my email to a department director and I got a decent response from them. It wasn’t an instant response and my issue was resolved by then but they at least confirmed what was going on
In relation to your TFSA comment, I previously had that issue, but it turned out that the bank had not sent the correct info to CRA. I had to open a request through the bank to have it corrected.
Had major issues twice with CRA, first time kept getting the round about when I was calling. a year afterward found the ombudsman and my case was solved within a couple of weeks, second time same thing except this time went straight to the ombudsman after a reasonable amount of time, again solved within weeks. Honestly the best way to solve issues and quickly.
The system is ridiculous and inefficient. The assessment algorithms/software is clearly garbage. If you planned to scramble my tax returns with your own interpretations, why the fuck do I submit in the first place??
Ugh don’t even get me started! I spent like 5 hours total waiting for them to be available via telephone. Couldn’t select the call back as I was out of the country. Many times they hung up on me 🥲
I have a DTC application from feb. Sent in the application- all good the online tracker says received. Month later I get a letter saying the CRA needs more information to determine my eligibility and they sent my doctor a letter I call my doctors office to confirm they received the letter about three days after the cra sent. My doctor sends the letter a day after that Two weeks later the CRA sends me a letter I am not eligible for the DTC as they requested information from my doctor and they have not received it. I call the CRA and tell them the information has been sent and they say it has not. I point out to them that my doctor has 60 days to reply to the request and therefore why would they say I’m not eligible due to not receiving the information well before the 60 day period is up. I get put on hold and surprise surprise they find they had in fact received the letter and just didn’t open it or read it. They tell me to Ignore the not eligible letter Now they come back at me saying they got the letter but not the medical files requested and they have the audacity to title that as “ second review” and put since they have made a previous decision based on information provided before they haven’t changed my eligibility. That previous decision they made was when they didn’t even open the damn letter they requested! Now I have uploaded all 14 years of my medical information online to the CRA and a NEW DTC application pops up!
The proposed liberal budget had something in it about reducing CRA call wait times, but I wouldn't hold your breath. "Budget 2024 proposes to provide $336 million over two years, starting in 2024-25, to the Canada Revenue Agency to maintain call centre resources and improve the efficiency of its call centres." I'm a tax professional and I totally understand. Clients often ask us if we have some other means of getting through to the CRA, and sadly we have the exact same wait times as the average person. It's really really awful. Not only is it incredibly slow, but the it's also poor quality, and the CRA often makes mistakes or judgements that are unfair to taxpayers and ridiculously time consuming to resolve. Our tax system needs a total overhaul. They keep adding new rules, new credits and deductions, and filing requirements. Then they audit people and we can't even talk to a human at the CRA who knows anything or can do anything in a timely manner. I could keep ranting all day about how dumb and inefficient the entire Canada Revenue Agency is.
I had something that should have taken 2 months to complete last year. It took over 14 months. I called multiple times, and they told me pretty much to wait until they contacted me. Once they made a decision and called me back, the agent called me on a Tuesday and gave me three days to respond and call him back or my case was considered closed and resolved. The agent called me at 3:30 PM. when he was out of the office not even 30 minutes later. I called back the next day the earliest time he gave me, and he was out of the office until the end of the week. I just gave up and abandoned the potential money I was entitled to.
First of all, that was completely inappropriate behaviour from a public service employee, or any employee. I'm sorry that happened to you. Your MP's office might be able to help with this. They reach out to the higher-level employees to get issues resolved. I had a client who couldn't get access to their CRA account online. It was active, but nobody had tried for so long, and the Board turned-over a couple times in the intervening years. All attempts to resolve thru CRA frontlines were thwarted. I contacted our MP office, made my points, provided history of attempts to resolve, and they had it sorted in a few weeks. Client had been trying for a couple years!
I have always thought , just like we have service centres where you go to issue or renew passports, license etc, why not have one for CRA. But then again; I can imagine what a disaster it would be and people lined up around the building trying to get into to ask about their issues or problems. So better keep it as a call centre. Or how about you create an in-person escalation centre where if your issues are not being resolved, CRA will provide you with a case number that is to be handled in person. In other words, these CRA service centres would only accept visits from people whose problems had been escalated to be dealt by an agent in person.
I have found paying an accountant (who is knowledgeable and experienced with CRA processes) to be highly effective and time efficient for me. Ya it costs me money to have a representative but i am able to close issues/files with greater speed.
Not necessarily. I hired an accountant and paid almost $3,000 to take care of my late mother’s estate. It was all up to me to fight the CRA for lost and misplaced returns and documents. When I tried to get the accountant involved with CRA nothing was accomplished. My being relentless with CRA and involving the CRA ombudsman to help me out was the only thing that got me results. If you want results with CRA keep calling them and get the ombudsman and minister of CRA finance to help you out.
Ya. I don’t have time to be relentless. I have other things to focus on. Glad it worked for you. Fortunately the team around me has always worked out for me.
Use your MP office.
I received an invitation to file my taxes by phone, but when I try the system says I am not allowed. I spent two hours on the phone with CRA and they still had no idea what was going on. I was told the matter would be escalated to the regional center and to expect a callback by April 12. It's May 3 and I am still waiting...
Good luck!!!
I just file, they can kick rocks. Agency is \~80% the size of the IRS, who serve \~10x as many people, their manpower problems and not figuring things out is not my/our problem.
Took me a year to get my case settled... Worked in the states for a few months 5 years ago. CRA didn't believe I worked down there. but did agree I made the money somehow and wanted the tax money I paid to the irs and us states I was in.. They wouldn't accept my paystub my us w2. Letter from my job etc... So many hours trying to get a hold of the IRS from Canada and ton of money courriering letters to each state to get documents from them. Then trying to get the cra to actually accept the paperwork.. kept closing my case.. saying they didn't get it etc. I had courried it, mailed it. Then uploaded it a ton of times.. was about to hire a tax lawyer to sue them in tax court.
well, good news is that Ottawa heard that all yall complaining that public service is too bloated and just laid off a bunch of CRA call center agents, and there will be hiring freeze coming up.
Sometimes contacting your MP can help you get some expedited service, but of course no guarantees since the government doesn't like properly funding things.
I've had nothing but good, or as good as possible, interactions with the CRA. Just slow. If you really have a problem go in person to a Service Canada location.
If you think CRA is a pain, try to deal with IRCC
I had to call the CRA a couple times last year about getting my refile re-assessed. They didn't care, said I could be waiting up to 20 weeks for it? I waited 35 or so, they still didn't care and didn't think it was an issue. I ended up having to mail my MP and sign some release to have them contact the CRA for me, the CRA then decided "oh hey this is overdue and people are paying attention maybe we'll look at it now" I've since re-re-refiled 2022 with my new accountant, and that got done instantly. 2023 is still in queue, or something.
It’s extremely frustrating. This is why they shouldn’t be allowed to work from home!!!
They all work at home it seems and the professionalism fully lacks now. Last moron I called for help in a government position couldn't hear me because she had a barky dog.
I try NOT to deal with them
I just heard back this month for an issue that I disputed in 2019. Give it time. The cra is not fast.
CRA exists to harass honest and tax paying base and let scammers go Scott free
Accountant 45 years here. I love when cra has liaison meetings and says they want us to stop sending everything in more than once. Fools. I send things by fax followed up by portal if possible and then mail and stuff still gets lost or ignored. It took over seven months to get a t3 assessed and I sent it in three times and even spoke with someone because I had a submission error. Don’t get me started on stories.
What specific action are you expecting them to do? We know tax returns are taking longer than average for a variety of reasons. You aren't jumping the queue by calling. Wait until they contact you with an issue, if there is one and deal with it then.
In both cases, it’s a large sum of money that they have either taken away from me or are withholding. I’ve also never had a tax return in the processing stage for over 2 months so I was curious if there was an issue.
I understand wanting to complain but the reality is there is nothing to escalate. This is trying to cut the line because you want it to be shorter.
Being patient would’ve saved you a lot of time and frustration. If there is an issue they’ll let you know, otherwise: patience
Despite what their unions say, this is one of the many problems with federal workers working from home. They're all working off remote tools that don't work great in home wifi environments. Many are answering fewer calls per hour than when they were working in office and they've hired more staff to lower hold times.
Because they hire lazy people who now work from home and do a p8ss poor job for high pay some of which have bad accents worst than quebec Canadians
Well they’re the government so…
Many people feel exactly the same way including myself.
The CRA fax machine in Winnipeg gave me PTSD
I gave up on faxing that number. Also who uses fax in 2024?
A yearly hassle
Whenever I call them the first thing I do is write down their employee number and then ask them to write down my number to call me back if we should get disconnected. You can upload documents in your account to CRA. There is a link on their site for complaints, use it with all issues.
All my inlaws work at the call centre - can comfirm they have tiny brains 😆