Finance Committee on May 7th, 2013

[Mark Perlman]

It's $53 million out of the total agency budget of $4.2 billion.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

So it's about 1%, something like that?

[Mark Perlman]

It's about that, yes.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

So in fact over the entire amount, the reductions are around 2%—for the entire time period, $98 million.

[Mark Perlman]

For the time period of...?

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

For the next two years, I think it is?

[Mark Perlman]

Yes, for the next few years.

When we get to...as I mentioned the budget said, it was 6.9% by maturity.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Okay. So it's fairly inconsequential in the big scheme of things, in overall corporate governance.

[Mark Perlman]

Overall for the agency, yes.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Absolutely.

I want to apologize, first of all, for my allergies. They happen around this time every year—tax season.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

When I started preparing for this last night, I started to get the sniffles. I'm not sure exactly why, but when taxes come up, it usually does that. I'm not sure if it does it to a lot of Canadians.

How many electronic returns would there have been ten years ago? Just approximately, what percentage would it have been?

[Mark Perlman]

I believe when we first started it was about 16% or 17%.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Very small, then.

[Mark Perlman]

It was very small.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

In fact, isn't it fair to say that being that it takes eight days to complete an electronic return and 50 days to do a paper copy, it's a lot less work for an electronic return?

[Mark Perlman]

It's a tremendous amount less.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Why don't you tell us what happens with an electronic return, just very briefly, if you can? When it comes in to the agency, does a computer read it, or how does it work?

[Richard Case]

We're talking about a largely automated process. Rather than having to key in data, move around piles of paper, and manage that pile of paper that we would otherwise have received, our computer receives that data directly through the e-filing of the individual, of the taxpayer.

Then our normal validation processes, computer-based validation processes, take place to verify the accuracy of the return and to ensure that all of the required information is there before a notice of assessment—

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

The computer does that.

[Richard Case]

Essentially it is very, very dependent on our computer system these days.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

What amount of time would you say would be spent by somebody from CRA—a physical person—on each of those returns?

[Richard Case]

It would be very little if there were no discrepancies detected by the system.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

So it would it be a couple of minutes, would you suggest?

[Richard Case]

I would think so.

Again, we're not program experts here—