Thanks, Mr. Commissioner, and thanks to the panellists today for attending before committee.
Mr. Commissioner, we hear a lot about the CRA and how it is treating taxpayers, or serving taxpayers, if you wish. Most of the letters we receive are negative.
I've just found about four letters that have come from taxpayers. I would like to read them, and I hope we can get some good comments from you on all of them.
One says:
My tax filings have been audited for two consecutive years, though there was and is nothing dishonest or sneaky in either filing. My claims have already been accepted for 2014, and I've been waiting for 22 weeks now for a resolve of the 2015 filing.
A second one says:
CRA agents with whom I've spoken are sometimes borderline rude, or stressed to the point of hysteria. One agent told me that responding to a submission or service complaint can take a year or more; though the “service standards” on the CRA website claim that the CRA will respond to a submission within 8 weeks, 100% of the time.
A third one says:
In early 2014, I started to receiving letters from the CRA stating that I owed them approximately $230,000.00 in back taxes. This was an absurd amount of money. In 2015 the CRA forwarded me all my “T” slips for years 2008 thru 2014 and when I completed my returns my calculations showed that I owed the CRA approximately $26,000.00. Even with interest and penalties the amount could be nowhere close to $230,000.00. If the CRA had all my “T” slips how could there be a $200,000.00 plus difference in their assessment? What the CRA did was either an act of malice or negligence, and was tantamount to harassment, bullying, and was a blatant use of intimidation tactics in order to carry out their mandate.
The last one says:
All a CRA representative had to do...was look at the return and the paperwork.... It should have been cased solved...but instead of someone at CRA simply looking at the paperwork, that threatening letter was sent to an 83 year old woman who knows nothing of CRA, their workings or the tax laws. It upset her. But in the end...five months later, it was solved. It all could have been avoided.
Mr. Commissioner, every member of Parliament, I believe, has received letters similar to these. What are we supposed to tell our constituents who feel they are being bullied and harassed by the CRA?
Thank you.