This is something that I dont understand. Why? The CRA is not underfunded. Its not like these guys aren't getting paid.
They're just bad at their jobs. Because there are no consequences for being bad at your job.
Maybe not underfunded but critical areas like technology and infrastructure might be underfunded. The company that I work for is in a similar position where we have plenty of funding, revenues and profits but some of our IT objectives are grossly underfunded.
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Maybe not underfunded but critical areas like technology and infrastructure might be underfunded. The company that I work for is in a similar position where we have plenty of funding, revenues and profits but some of our IT objectives are grossly underfunded.
This is the thing though...its not about money, its about common sense. I know, I know...the very first mistake is attempting to attribute rationality to Government work.
If you and your company knew that your system wasn't...I dont know, 'perfect?' Would you choose to re-vamp the entire thing when you knew that 90% of your annual revenue was about to happen in 30 days?
Every single IT professional I know would probably say something like:
"It worked fine in the past, if we want to improve it then we need to create the new system, test it, and gradually port it over so smoothly that nobody ever even knew that it happened."
What you dont do is tear the existing infrastructure to the ground a month before the busiest time of your 'business year' (Tax Season) and then....what? Hope for the best?
Why not do it last June? Give yourself 6-8 months to work it out? And yet still, frankly, I am unconvinced of whatever conceived problem it is that they are attempting to fix.
It appeared to work just fine last year. What exactly is it that they are attempting to fix?
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I think the problem is they made the system too user friendly. Bring back the paper forms and slips where you understood your taxes.
The computer programs and downloaded slips abstract people from understanding their taxes. At a minimum they should strip away the GUi and just give people spreadsheet based forms that do the math.
I think the solution is auto filing. The CRA gathers all this, sends you a statement and says “here’s the outcome, if you disagree, send in your documentation and such by this date”
That would probably take care of over 90% of people’s returns. There’s absolutely no need to have a “normal” case where someone has a T4, RRSP slip and nothing else, filing or paying for someone to file. It’s entirely redundant.
Oh, and take away all the dumb boutique tax credits. Just flat out erase those pages and make the filing easier.
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I think the problem is they made the system too user friendly. Bring back the paper forms and slips where you understood your taxes.
The computer programs and downloaded slips abstract people from understanding their taxes. At a minimum they should strip away the GUi and just give people spreadsheet based forms that do the math.
Make people go through line by line.
We should take a regressive approach with more things. Do you like electricity? Well today we’re gonna build a hand crank generator barely capable of illuminating a single lightbulb.
Up after electricity will be veal cutlets.
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I think the solution is auto filing. The CRA gathers all this, sends you a statement and says “here’s the outcome, if you disagree, send in your documentation and such by this date”
That would probably take care of over 90% of people’s returns. There’s absolutely no need to have a “normal” case where someone has a T4, RRSP slip and nothing else, filing or paying for someone to file. It’s entirely redundant.
Oh, and take away all the dumb boutique tax credits. Just flat out erase those pages and make the filing easier.
I agree, my wife religiously keeps all our prescription receipts. Why? You need like $17,000 to actually save you 4 cents in tax owing.
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I agree, my wife religiously keeps all our prescription receipts. Why? You need like $17,000 to actually save you 4 cents in tax owing.
If you think that's bad, try the celiac tax credit. Oh, ya, let me just keep a receipt of every GF product I buy, calculate the difference in cost to a normal product, divide the amount consumed by the number of people consuming it with celiac(how much rice flour did I put in this batch of cupcakes?) and ya, I did this once.
Quote:
If several people eat the product, only the costs related to the part of the product that is eaten by the person with celiac disease may be claimed as a medical expense.
Why these stupid donkeys can't figure out an average by now, and offer up a single value you can use if you aren't Rain Man is beyond me. But it essentially means there is no tax credit available, because to claim it is so onerous nobody does it.
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As an accountant with a celiac wife, I read the rules on claiming a refund for it, laughed, and immediately thought, this is... Ridiculous. We have never claimed a cent because it is not worth the time or effort. Whoever conjured up that policy needs to be taken out to the woodshed.
Here is my best story about how useless the CRA is. I had an GST audit done on a company I manage. They come back and tell me I have paid 8K TOO MUCH after I send in the information. Ummm, what. No I haven't, its all auto done from the software and I know what I am doing, and its audited on top of that. They go through it manually and somehow come to an 8K Refund. Then the agent says "Well I can't pay you back 8K when we are auditing you, can you go through this and see if I made any mistakes". It was all mistakes. I sent back "oh you missed x, y, and z, if should be 5K". They then sent me 5K. They literally had no idea what they were doing. Then the agent says "I am going to keep your file open for 2 more weeks because I don't want to get assigned another file and I go on vacation in 2 weeks." They actually said that to me, on the phone, on what I assume was a recorded call.
The CRA is beyond an absolute joke, I have never dealt with more incompetent people on the daily. No wonder people commit tax fraud because it's the equivalent of tricking the kid in the back of the class that was eating glue all day to give you their lunch money.
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I agree, my wife religiously keeps all our prescription receipts. Why? You need like $17,000 to actually save you 4 cents in tax owing.
And that's how most of these things are. Here we are, saving these little slips of paper, going through the trouble of filing all those, and saving like $8. Who cares? CRA has all the slips that matter, so just run through them, tell me what I owe, and leave me alone. For the vast majority of people that would be completely fine.
I think the solution is auto filing. The CRA gathers all this, sends you a statement and says “here’s the outcome, if you disagree, send in your documentation and such by this date”
That would probably take care of over 90% of people’s returns. There’s absolutely no need to have a “normal” case where someone has a T4, RRSP slip and nothing else, filing or paying for someone to file. It’s entirely redundant.
Oh, and take away all the dumb boutique tax credits. Just flat out erase those pages and make the filing easier.
See, I dont get this. I understand the idea and even fundamentally agree with the concept but in practice?
You want to hand this collection of clowns MORE responsibility and MORE authority? They cant even handle it when its being FOR THEM much less make them responsible for doing it for themselves!
I wouldn't trust this outstanding collection of idiots to walk my dog much less file my taxes.
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See, I dont get this. I understand the idea and even fundamentally agree with the concept but in practice?
You want to hand this collection of clowns MORE responsibility and MORE authority? They cant even handle it when its being FOR THEM much less make them responsible for doing it for themselves!
I wouldn't trust this outstanding collection of idiots to walk my dog much less file my taxes.
meh, it's fine. I mean really, this issue with the slips this year? It becomes their problem.
And really, for the vast majority of people, there are no complicating factors, and it would just make everything easier. I'm not convinced that most people are seeing any net benefit from the current system. When you consider things like filing with a missing T3/T5 it's probably a net loss overall.
meh, it's fine. I mean really, this issue with the slips this year? It becomes their problem.
And really, for the vast majority of people, there are no complicating factors, and it would just make everything easier. I'm not convinced that most people are seeing any net benefit from the current system. When you consider things like filing with a missing T3/T5 it's probably a net loss overall.
Yeah, and if it becomes their problem then they can't fine YOU for it.
You think they want that?
I'm still somewhat surprised.
Considering the epic Turbotax screwup and CRA being incapable of finding their own ass with both hands and a map that people are still all aboard the 'automation/make the Government do it' train.
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Yeah, and if it becomes their problem then they can't fine YOU for it.
You think they want that?
I'm still somewhat surprised.
Considering the epic Turbotax screwup and CRA being incapable of finding their own ass with both hands and a map that people are still all aboard the 'automation/make the Government do it' train.
I’ve been using free software that autofills the bulk of my slips every year for most of the past decade, if not longer.
Never had an issue. Don’t know anyone who has. On a bad year I have to input most of the forms myself, which is like an elementary school exercise in data entry. On a good year I’m essentially just reviewing everything for accuracy, which is not much different than what Slava is suggesting.
This is not a complicated process.
Obviously I’m biased because I’ll tell you the accounting professional is going to be virtually toast thanks to AI, but tax filing in particular should require almost zero human intervention. The act of filing the majority of tax returns already has no real value.
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These are the things AI should be used for. Do away with 80% of the CRA work force and implement AI. But then again, I don't think the government, or whatever company they hire to implement AI, could do it in a way that wouldn't wind up with an entire debacle and resulting months of hearings on how much money was wasted and how terrible the system is.
These are the things AI should be used for. Do away with 80% of the CRA work force and implement AI. But then again, I don't think the government, or whatever company they hire to implement AI, could do it in a way that wouldn't wind up with an entire debacle and resulting months of hearings on how much money was wasted and how terrible the system is.
I'd sooner watch a Terminator hunt and peck at a keyboard doing taxes than blindly trust whatever BS AI CRA manages to cobble together.
A human is still better.
I have been involved in 3 automated pilot projects over the past 5 years and they've all sucked.
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