Time’s Up: CRA’s 100 Day Mandate for Improvement

After years of frustration on the part of tax professionals and taxpayers alike, the Finance Minister ordered the Canada Revenue Agency to clean up its act in 100 days. Specifically, the improvement plan was to run from September 2 through December 11. Finance Minister and Minister of National Revenue, Francoise-Phillippe Champagne instructed CRA to fix “unacceptable wait times and service delays.” Time’s up this week and CRA has released an update on progress. What gets measured, gets done. Let’s see what CRA’s metrics show. 

Knowledge Bureau’s Income Tax Estimator, a sophisticated software tool used in teaching our certificate personal tax filing and planning courses, incorporates the most recent changes to tax brackets and known provisions including the calculation of the Canada Recovery Benefits.  We have now calculated the 2021 tax brackets based on CPI figures released last week to enable students and Knowledge Bureau Calculator subscribers to prepare projections for 2021 taxes payable as part of year-end tax planning activities. 

Today, even the smallest business requires timely and reliable information, if it is to succeed and thrive despite the pandemic and the constant threat of future CRA auditing. A new course from Knowledge Bureau, Budgeting & Forecasting for Small Business is designed to teach you how to use the information within bookkeeping systems to assist business owners to make sound business decisions throughout the year: an essential service during these times.

This is your last week to take advantage of early-bird tuition rates to attend the November 18 Virtual CE Summit, and we’ve introduced a second flex study option for those unable to attend the live event. But special tuition rates still apply until the deadline, with whichever study option you choose..so be sure to act by October 31 and save $100.

In 2020, a large number of taxpayers are working from home due to workplace restrictions imposed by governments due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The current requirements for claiming home office expenses are very strict, and the reporting is rather cumbersome.  But CRA is working on a solution.

The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) has already been repaid by hundreds of thousands of recipients for various reasons:  program ineligibility, application errors, CRA processing errors and more. Some of the same issues now plague the new Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB), and it may be in part due to a computer glitch.

The pandemic has disproportionately affected older disabled people, with those aged 60 and older accounting for one-third of COVID-19 cases nationally, according to Statistics Canada.  Tax and financial advisors can do much to help with the financial costs that flow from this, by ensuring that those who may qualify for the Disability Tax Credit for the first time, act now to get a T2201 form signed by a medical professional.