The 'BLOAT' At The CRA :-( | Page 3 | Your stories | Discussion forum

CRA headcount 60,000 people up from 40,000 in 2015 (up 50%)
We are a country of 41.5 million people

IRS headcount 90,000 people up from 84,000 in 2015 (up 7%)
U.S. is a country of 341.5 million people

So in terms of CRA employees per population Canada or the CRA has about 5.5X the employees the IRS has.

Worse yet is in the last 10 years the number of employees has grown 50% - can anyone here honestly say that CRA service has improved in that time?

Cannot accept declining performance of the CRA? Want new leadership in the Ministry of National Revenue? Vote next Monday for a new government for a CHANGE. Take action. Move the country FORWARD.

It might be okay for individuals to enter their slips by hand. But for those who work in a tax clinic, they have "boxes" to do. I can imagine how time consuming and error prone their tasks can be.

Deputy BoC Governor Carolyn Rogers has alarmed about a productivity crisis in Canada in March 2024. She was right. The identified problem was apparently not getting better.

There is an option on the CRA website to "Chat with the CRA".

I have tried to use it a few times, but I have never been able to chat with anybody... It always ends-up with a message saying "Unfortunately, the queue is unavailable. Please continue to use the FAQs"

Is it just me having this issue?

Bill said
I guess if you mess up in your audit assessments that means more appeals thus more unionized civil servants have to be hired to deal with the appeals and that's how the empire expands.

Personally I've come to believe CRA hardly does anything, the mere fact there is a CRA makes the vast majority comply and that's the objective. All my (handful of) experiences with CRA in my life have been regarding monetarily small errors, either mine or theirs, and then months of back and forth before it's all basically reversed or maybe a couple hundred bucks adjustment is made. So a lot of their person-hours for really next to nothing.  

I could not have said it better. Exactly my experience! At least two thirds of my T-5's were missing this year and my TFSA amount was $30,000 over. You can bet your ass if I hadn't kept my records and taken utter responsibility that I'd be getting interest charges and penalties. Ask me how I know. The past year was a smaller amount and it was still months and months of back and forth. I would have been screwed this year if I had trusted their information. Once burned, twice shy. Stay frosty peeps.

itsme said
Can you clarify by what you mean your TFSA amount was $30,000 over? Did the CRA say you were over the limit when you were not?  

Sorry, I should have clarified. According to CRA, I still had $30,000 room in which to contribute to my tfsa. Fact is, I had no room whatsoever, as I keep tight record on contributions as my hubby got dinged for over contributing which was based on his misguided trust of the CRA info.
By the time they sent him the letter and interest charge, it was past the time that he could contest it.
They are either really dumb or really clever.

Thanks for this great debate.

We really can't say whether our CRA is good, bad and/or ugly unless we compare them to the tax authorities in other countries. I think some of us are using a theoretical standard of perfection as a benchmark.

COIN said
Thanks for this great debate.

We really can't say whether our CRA is good, bad and/or ugly unless we compare them to the tax authorities in other countries. I think some of us are using a theoretical standard of perfection as a benchmark.  

They got a lot worse over the last 5 years. You can compare CRA of 2025 vs 2020 and you’ll find that the level of incompetence has grown exponentially.

Keep in mind that the CRA, like many other government departments, has a seasonal/intermittent work force. Kinda like census takers, those administering newly announced benefits (like the dental plan) or election staff. So a large portion of such workers are "new on the job" for much of the time.

It takes exceptional management to keep standards up in such an environment.

On the other hand, much of private industry today (including most financial institutions!) is actively trying to downgrade and eliminate customer service. Many outfits are now putting a "default" delay (Hewlett-Packard was caught adding a 15-minute delay to ALL customer calls other than sales) in to discourage customers while they have to listen to exhortations to go on line to circle in useless web pits. (That came to light when their reps began protesting a massive spike in abusive and angry clients!)

There's a famous 1998 management "bible" titled "Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Everything" that popularized the principle that loyalty programs are much more effective than satisfied customers. I remember seeing the guy interviewed back then and being revolted, but he seems to have won the day. Why else would our colleagues here be reporting getting flowers, points and chocolates instead of competence?

http://www.goodreads.com/book/....._Priceless

There has of course been pushback:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/sh.....omer-love/

I, for one, am happy that CRA at least WANTS to settle everything smoothly. And I really do believe that.