I've been preparing tax returns since the 1980's and in the past CRA rarely made a mistake when it came to processing a paper tax return. But since the government moved the processing centres to places where no one wants to live, errors are much more frequent. Out west they shut down Surrey and moved the jobs to Winnipeg. How many people would have given up the West Coast climate for the cold and mosquitoes of Winnipeg?
Some of the errors have been stunning. One Notice of Assessment read: "Because your net income changed, we changed your British Columbia allowable medical expenses from $5,500 to $681,449." The taxpayer called this a "big boo-boo". If net income had changed then both the federal and provincial medical claims would have changed. But someone at CRA only changed the provincial claim and by an amount so large that eventually it would be discovered and cause a problem. It's beyond me how someone could have made that mistake and not notice it. This mistake triggered an audit which wasted everyone's time.
Last year on one return we entered $2,105.14 and the data-entry person, because at this line you don't enter the cents just the dollars, should have entered "2105". Instead what was entered was "210514" — a hundred times larger and guaranteed to get flagged. How can that be a simple mistake when on most lines of a tax return you don't enter the cents? It's abnormal to enter the cents and even more abnormal to forget the decimal point. Aren't CRA's staff looking at the screen after they type in a number? The return was stopped, and we get a letter. Hoping to avoid having to send in receipts, foolishly hoping the problem can be solved over the phone, we are doomed to a long wait on hold.
And the call stands a very good chance of being a complete waste of time. Though all CRA's agents love to hear your story, and you may get some information out of them, when it comes to actually doing something to solve your problem, they won't. Even when they can see it's an obvious mistake on their part, they will insist you send in a letter repeating everything you just said on the phone, plus send in all kinds of proof. If most people knew how useless it was to phone CRA, CRA wouldn't need to hire more call-centre staff.
I screw up all the time and I have no right to criticize any human error. But these are more like cat-jumped-on-keyboard errors. Each CRA mistake begets phone calls and letters — CRA creates its own make-work project. No wonder you have to wait hours to get through on the phone and months to receive a reply to your letter. I have a ton of other examples, but let me give you one more tale and tell me if there could be more than just honest mistakes going on here.
In October of 2024, the 2023 medical expenses for two seniors were audited. We had to detail everything and send in copies of all the receipts. In doing this we found we had double-entered some receipts, which we adjusted for and a cheque to cover what was owed was included in our submission. Three months later we received a reply saying that since we didn't respond to the audit the medical expenses are denied and we owe them over $1700.
So we did it all again and added in a letter saying that a reply to the audit was sent in, and CRA must have received our package because the cheque in that package was cashed on November 16, 2024. In the letter was the sentence: "I hope I won't be charged interest or penalty for a delay that wasn't my fault."
A month later a letter from CRA arrives saying they had received correspondence from Taxman Services, and if we want CRA to discuss their case with Taxman Services we must first send in an Authorize a Representative form. They said the second batch of stuff we sent them will not be returned, and we must submit a third batch.
Nowhere in what was previously sent in was a request for CRA to talk to anyone else. All submitted letters were written in the first person singular, "we" was never used. Nothing inside an envelope referenced me or Taxman Services. The only place where "Taxman Services" appeared was in the return address on the outside of the second submission's envelope. I had a cold and my client didn't want to catch it, so he stayed away and I mailed everything off. And when I stamped my return address on the envelope I never thought it would cause a problem.
Over four decades I've sent in a lot of my client's mail with my return address on it, and no one has ever thrown everything into the garbage and told us to file an Authorize a Representative form. Maybe this is a new policy that I'm unaware of. But it's hard to believe that CRA would adopt a policy that was so dismissive of a taxpayer's efforts to comply with their requests. It seemed to me that we were being shown who's the boss. This is punishing a senior for asking for some mercy and saying it was CRA's fault. I think they were sending us on a long paper-chase that would guarantee even more interest being charged. Which they succeeded in doing. But it's not a few more dollars in interest that's the big punishment. The real spanking here is the cost of a complete redo. There's the worry and the work and the waste of time. They want the client to pay for everything again and they want me to toil in drudgery, frittering away my life, moving pieces of paper around. They want me to suffer just as they do every day they go to work for the CRA. What could be crueler than that?
So we did it all again and added a letter saying: "I do not wish to authorize a representative. Please only deal directly with me and with no one else. Thank you for your time."
You will note how polite we are. Everything was double-checked to make sure there was no mention of me or my business anywhere. Bullying and intimidation does work.
Four months later we get a Notice of Reassessment and CRA has accepted our numbers. Everything is hunky-dory except the cheque we sent in was not used to cover the mistake we made. The money hasn't been applied to any tax year — it seems to be hiding somewhere. We'll have to call them up again. It never ends.
This is not the first time I've received malicious and, worst of all, childish behaviour from CRA staff. And I doubt we are the first to receive this paper-chase prank.
Not only do we need more CRA staff, but we need people who are clever, conscientious and kind — who aren't intentionally trying to clog up the system. I also realize that's impossible given where the tax centres are located. Trust me, I've lived in Winnipeg.


P.S. I may have been wrong thinking my client was the one getting picked on. This was not just a one-off. A few months ago another client of mine got hit with this Authorize-a-Representative scam. Maybe it's me they're after! Regardless, make sure you use your own return address on everything you send to CRA.