I'm not asking you for—
Evidence of meeting #120 for Finance in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cra.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #120 for Finance in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cra.
A video is available from Parliament.
9:35 a.m.
Acting Deputy Assistant Commissioner and Agency Comptroller, Finance and Administration Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
There would be some returns that are identified—
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
But if 80% are done electronically, the majority would take a couple of seconds, maybe more?
9:35 a.m.
Acting Deputy Assistant Commissioner and Agency Comptroller, Finance and Administration Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
I would have thought so, yes.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
What would it take for a person at CRA to do a manual return? How long would it take for that? By the time they carry it from office to office, open the envelope, and do all that stuff, what would that take?
9:35 a.m.
Acting Deputy Assistant Commissioner and Agency Comptroller, Finance and Administration Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
Well, a considerable amount of time. As I say, we've—
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
Could you define “considerable” for me, in these circumstances?
9:35 a.m.
Acting Deputy Assistant Commissioner and Agency Comptroller, Finance and Administration Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
Again, just by virtue of the fact that it takes six to eight weeks to go from beginning to end, I think it's a good indicator of the amount of manual intervention—
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
9:35 a.m.
Acting Deputy Assistant Commissioner and Agency Comptroller, Finance and Administration Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
Hours...I mean, someone has to receive it. Someone has to make sure the attachments are proper—
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
I only have five minutes here, and I'm looking for a pretty good estimate of how long. So would you say five or six hours?
9:35 a.m.
Acting Deputy Assistant Commissioner and Agency Comptroller, Finance and Administration Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
Again, that's a little bit out of our area of expertise, but I would think, if we can get that information, it depends on the nature of the return—
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
9:35 a.m.
Acting Deputy Assistant Commissioner and Agency Comptroller, Finance and Administration Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
I would think so, yes.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
So why haven't you reduced CRA labour more? It seems that there's a trend to saving there.
I mean, we've reduced the amount; it only takes minutes per return compared with ten years ago, when 84% were done manually. There hasn't been an 84% reduction in staff, has there, or even a 20% reduction in staff over the last ten years?
9:35 a.m.
Acting Deputy Assistant Commissioner and Agency Comptroller, Finance and Administration Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
It's a gradual process that has taken place over a significant period of time. There are additional resources that we can now devote to post-assessing reviews, and verification—
9:35 a.m.
Acting Deputy Assistant Commissioner and Agency Comptroller, Finance and Administration Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
—and enforcement—that we weren't able to do before.
So there is a redirection of certain resources to ensure that we have high quality, with high confidence in our system, and to ensure that people are paying their fair share and are filing their returns correctly.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
Is it fair to say that you're doing a much more efficient job on the whole process today than you were ten years ago, just because of the nature of the change of the workforce and computerization?
9:35 a.m.
Acting Deputy Assistant Commissioner and Agency Comptroller, Finance and Administration Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
I don't think there's any question about how efficient we've become. When you look at the unit costs of paper versus electronic, I think hands down you would have to conclude that we are much more efficient today, and we will continue to get more efficient over time as taxpayers choose the electronic service channels.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
You're able to do that because of the changes in the nature of the computerization and also just because of some of the government changes generally through the budgetary process.
9:35 a.m.
Acting Deputy Assistant Commissioner and Agency Comptroller, Finance and Administration Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
Absolutely. And we've invested in those service channels for Canadians—the My Account, the My Payment, our web, things like that—in trying to provide an easy, accessible, and cost-effective service to taxpayers.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Rajotte
Thank you.
Colleagues, we have a few minutes. We do have to deal with the votes on both CRA and Finance, so we will have a very short round.
Mr. Côté, you have two minutes.
May 7th, 2013 / 9:40 a.m.
NDP
Raymond Côté NDP Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
A survey indicates that the proportion of people who file their own tax returns has dropped from 50% to a mere 40%.
Despite the implementation of the electronic tax return in an attempt to facilitate things, shouldn't we talk about failure in terms of that implementation, since so few people are filing their own tax returns?