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:

The majority of Canadian financial professionals and business leaders say the government is not doing enough to support post-secondary education, according to an online poll conducted by Knowledge Bureau, Canada’s premiere national institute for excellence in financial education. These findings come despite generous, but underutilized, support from the RESP, Canada Education Savings Grants and Canada Learning Bonds.

The Canada Revenue Agency completed nearly 112,000 audits during fiscal 2016-17, according to a government report on recent efforts to crack down on tax cheats. If you or your clients are chosen for an audit, there are a few best practices that can help you through the process.

“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” — Oprah Winfrey

Canadian portfolio manager and 25-year veteran of the financial services industry, Douglas V. Nelson, CFP, MFA, CLU, CIM, has been awarded the 2017 DAC Client Innovation Scholarship Award, to be presented at the Distinguished Advisor Conference in Kelowna, B.C., November 5-8. The award was co-founded by Knowledge Bureau and Franklin Templeton Investments in 2016.

Canadian household debt hit a record in the second quarter of this year, at $1.68 of debt for every dollar of income. As interest rates increase and debt levels soar, your clients run the risk of much greater uncertainty about their financial security.

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