Kathy Dickenson calls herself a "Phoenix piñata."

Over the past two years, just about everything that could have gone wrong with the federal public servant's pay has gone wrong, from receiving two paycheques for months, to watching them stop altogether. Dickenson is feeling a bit battered.

Now it's tax time, and the Ottawa resident is bracing for more punishment.

Her 2017 T4 indicates she earned just $16,000, which is wildly inaccurate. So rather than rely on that official account, she's tackling her taxes the old-fashioned way.

"I'm going to paper file, with my accountant, using my spreadsheet, and we're going to make sure it's as correct as we can get it," said Dickenson, who works for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Dickenson has essentially created her own more accurate T4, and those are the numbers she'll submit to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).

Legal concerns

She got the idea from a Facebook page used by public servants who are trying to navigate the failed Phoenix system.

Canadian Food Inspection Agency employee Kathy Dickenson refuses to use the income listed on her T4 slip this year. Instead, she's creating her own spreadsheet and filing her taxes manually. (Submitted)

Other federal workers told CBC they, too, plan to forego the more efficient electronic tax filing route, in some cases because the filing software simply won't work with such obviously flawed numbers.

Some also have legal concerns, since submitting a government-issued T4 amounts to certifying "that the information given on this return and in any documents attached is correct and complete and fully discloses all [their] income," according to a declaration on the tax return form.

Despite that warning, the department in charge of the Phoenix payroll system, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), has sent a message to federal employees asking them to use the most recent tax slips issued, even if they contain obvious errors.

There's so much chaos. - David Alloggia, public servant

David Alloggia's 2017 T4 slip claims he earned about $40,000 more than he actually did. He's tried to get answers from CRA, and help from the Phoenix pay centre.

"I got 18 different responses to one single question," said Alloggia, who works at Transport Canada in Ottawa. "There's so much chaos."

He's not alone in his department: Alloggia said one co-worker received a T4 that said he had worked in New Brunswick all year, when he had been in Ottawa the entire time.

Federal worker David Alloggia can't figure out why his T4 slip says he earned $40,000 more than he was paid last year. (Julie Ireton, CBC) Others received tax slips from Quebec, even though they didn't work or live in that province in 2017.

Affecting entire families

For Alloggia and many others, the problem has spread to their spouses.

"My girlfriend ... she has a daughter, but now that our two incomes are calculated and it looks like my income is $100,000, we don't know if we're going to get any child benefits," he said.

No one from PSPC was available for comment, and the CRA failed to answer CBC's specific questions.

The union representing professionals in the government said it's hearing "tons" of complaints from members receiving inaccurate T4s.

"A lot of people are panicking," said Debi Daviau, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. "We represent tax auditors. A lot of them won't file taxes with the wrong T4, even if the government is telling them to do that."