CRA’s Callback Service for Tax Pros Pilot

Are you a tax professional with years of experience? Have you ever felt frustrated after calling the CRA, having spent hours on hold, wasting your client’s or employer’s time, only to speak to CRA agents who aren’t qualified to answer your questions? The Auditor General of Canada was equally displeased in a scathing report last fall on wait times and accuracy levels at the CRA. Now a new CRA callback service may come to the rescue this tax season. Here is my experience with the pilot project so far:

Are you frustrated with long wait times for CRA responses or unsure if the answers you have been given are right? Although the CRA has recently hired a third party to give “general” answers about pandemic supports on the T1, professionals need to be precise when filing. Having fast, authoritative access to tax questions helps down the line at tax audit time, too. That’s the role of Evergreen Explanatory Notes, available 24/7, in your professional toolkit. 

Now is the right time to consider a career in professional bookkeeping, as small business owners in Canada need your help to navigate the repercussions of the pandemic and its fallout. Meet the high demand for qualified practitioners to take the burden of bookkeeping and CRA remittances off their shoulders. Become a credentialled bookkeeping services specialist.

The federal government has changed its mind: at least some of the self-employed people who received the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) based on erroneous instructions from CRA no longer have to repay the benefits. But the heavy audit response following the pandemic emergency provisions has resulted in a tax quagmire for many. Tax specialists can help.

Kudos to the CRA. They may just have heard your feedback on our January poll where the vast majority of advisors suggested that the CRA should cut people some slack.  Yesterday they did, with the announcement that interest relief would be available for taxpayers who made under $75,000 and received pandemic support benefits in 2020. There is more good news, too, for refundable tax credit recipients.

It appears that $2 a day adds up to millions of dollars in tax costs for the government.  The Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) released the costs of the new simplified home workspace expenses on February 4, now estimated at $260 million. The costing provides some interesting insight on expense filing by employees.

The CRA has introduced several new rules for filing employment expenses in 2020 which in reality, have complicated rather than simplified, employment deduction claims. Four employment filing profiles have emerged, as well as a new little-known calculation for home office space common area use. Details and a tip sheet follow.