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:

Accounting departments in growing companies have a special role in collaborating with shareholders:  to help  those at the financial helm to understand not only where the business results lie today, but what  resources it will need to support future growth, potential financing gaps, and how they can best addressed.

Year end tax planning includes upgrading tax office environments to substantially increase efficiencies. The proof appears to be in the pudding: TaxCycle users  are reporting a 41% decrease in paper printing and handling, 30% more accurate tax preparation and 21% time savings per client engagement.

How do advisors successfully engage multiple generations in a digital world in order to build and sustain family wealth?

It’s an important cross-over: for the first time, Canada’s 65-year-olds have outnumbered children ages 0 to 14.

The first transfer of Canadian banking information to the Internal Revenue Service was completed September 30, as reported last week.  That was the result of a September 16 appeal in which The Honourable Mr. Justice Martineau of the Canadian Federal Court in Vancouver ruled that the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) legislation is both legal under Canadian law and not inconsistent with the U.S./Canada Tax Treaty.

An argument that is mathematically possible will not avail a taxpayer who is found by the Court not to be credible.  That was the unfortunate result for a taxpayer who took on CRA in a case of unreported income.