Help Clients Recover Millions

Are your clients owed money by CRA? As of March 31, 2025, the CRA holds about 10.2 million uncashed cheques totalling $1.7 billion. In your view, why is this happening? We put that question to our readers last months and as usual, their comments were insightful:

First Word Goes to Jodi, a proactive pro in helping clients get their money back: When the uncashed cheques became available for us to see as representatives I was so surprised at how many there were. Lots with only a small cheque or two missing, but many individuals had multiple cheques, and hundreds, even a few with thousands, of dollars owed to them. We’ve gotten the majority of them back for clients now, but it’s a part of our process to check, and we’re continually finding money for new clients who had no idea.

Client are Busy; CRA is a Difficult Partner. From Tax Pro Ann-Margaret Laurin: Clients are on the move, unfiled taxes, and or closed bank accounts are causing uncashed cheques to make their way back to CRA & it is piling up. Removing the uncashed cheque notification from Autofil reduces this opportunity for tax payers. The Auntie’s filing taxes for families & friends may not know that uncashed cheques are a “thing”.

But let`s face it, we know CRA has been redirecting a “self-serve” approach, with a step back in customer service. As professional we will wear two hats: to be the enforcer for our clients, and go after uncashed cheques on their behalf, and the informer on behalf of our Government, to notify our community and new clients to check if they have any uncashed cheques sitting in the bank of CRA. What the tax payer does not know will not be taught by CRA unless you look for it.

Postal Problems, Benefit Clawback Misconceptions. If the address on file is slightly wrong and postal delivery does not make the effort to fix it - e.g. apartment 1B entered as 18, postal code doesn’t match the address. Some people on Social Assistance are afraid that if their refund cheque hits their bank account, it will count against them as income – thanks for that insight Rosalind.

Email Track is Irreversible and that’s a Problem. Grace Tsang adds: Once you signed up to receive emails to communicate with the CRA, you are not able to request to change your correspondence to be sent by mail.

Communications Issues at the Heart of It. Doris M WOODMAN-MCMILLAN tells it like it is: CRA is making it impossible for normal people to interact. The individuals have to a) contact CRA directly (fat chance, as they are receiving higher than anticipated call volumes!)  b) log into their My Account, which they don’t know how to do. I had a senior that required their NOA, went to an office to speak to a human, and was told they had to log in to get it. They don’t know how. They took away the ability to provide banking information with their tax returns. Stupid move.

Financial Advisors Have a Role Too. Advisors sometimes don’t follow up enough on clients’ tax results. I was one of them not tracking or emailing a query. CRA is efficient, so I left the clients to CRA or tax preparers, too hopefully. This from Denzil Feinberg R.F.P., CFP (Ret.)

Last word goes to Robert Litschel: A lot of time clients move but do not inform the CRA that they have done so. We as tax preparers cannot help them with this as we used to. Previously, we could tick a box on the return to state that there is a new address. Now that box is gone and we cannot even call the CRA to make changes. The client usually cannot get hold of the CRA and just lets it go, only to discover their cheque has gone AWOL.

The CRA should make it possible (once again) for the tax preparer to work on the clients’ behalf to enable a change of address. We are representatives of the clients after all.

Thank you all for weighing in and please weigh in again this month’s poll:

Do you believe Canada’s tax system based on self-assessment  has suffered under recent changes at CRA and by Finance Canada?  If so, what is the one wish you have for tax reform?