No, you aren't mistaken.
I think that's part of the solution.
I'm going to describe a situation that I experienced with the Canada Revenue Agency.
We're involved in the community volunteer tax program. A CRA employee called to tell me about the situation of a senior who was trying to file his tax returns for the previous 10 years. According to the calculations, the man owed $10,000. However, he didn't know how to go about filing. So I was asked if we could help him, and I answered that we could. In the end, we managed to reduce the amount from $10,000 to $5,000.