Finance Committee on May 7th, 2013

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

I'm not asking you for—

[Richard Case]

There would be some returns that are identified—

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

But if 80% are done electronically, the majority would take a couple of seconds, maybe more?

[Richard Case]

I would have thought so, yes.

[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?

[Richard Case]

Well, a considerable amount of time. As I say, we've—

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

Could you define “considerable” for me, in these circumstances?

[Richard Case]

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—

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

So you would suggest hours?

[Richard Case]

Hours...I mean, someone has to receive it. Someone has to make sure the attachments are proper—

[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?

[Richard Case]

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—

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

But it's certainly in the hours, isn't it?

[Richard Case]

I would think so, yes.

[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?

[Richard Case]

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—

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

And enforcement.

[Richard Case]

—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.

[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?

[Richard Case]

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.

[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.

[Richard Case]

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.

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

Thank you.

[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.

[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?