The minister in charge of the Canada Revenue Agency says it is “unacceptable” that one in four business owners who sought tax advice from the agency’s call centres got incorrect information.

An internal survey conducted in late 2013 showed that 25 per cent of business inquiries were incorrectly answered by CRA agents. Those finding were even worse than reports issued by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which poorly rated the CRA’s call centre.

"These results are unacceptable,” Minister of National Revenue Kerry-Lynne Findlay said Tuesday in an email statement to CTV News.

“When Canadian individuals and businesses contact the Canada Revenue Agency, we expect them to be provided with correct information.”

Findlay added that her department has implemented “several measures to improve the quality of services offered by the CRA.”

Her office reiterated a number of initiatives, including a requirement that call agents provide their ID numbers and the option to use a mobile app or make a tax inquiry in writing.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the agency said the CRA conducts “regular and ongoing monitoring of the accuracy of call agent responses.”

Philippe Brideau said each call centre agent is monitored six times each quarter for quality and accuracy.

But since reporting on the results of the CRA’s accuracy audit, CTV News has heard from many individual taxpayers who say they’ve been given incorrect information and bad advice, or left unable to reach a live agent on the phone.

Among them is Allan Cox of London, Ont., who said the CRA owes him thousands of dollars, but the matter is in dispute and he hasn’t seen any of the money. He said he has been trying to rectify the problem for two years, with no luck.

“When you talk to person A, you get one answer, you talk to person B you get another answer, you talk to person C, you get another answer,” he told CTV News.

The CRA handles about 3.3 million business inquiries per year. In 2013-14, it handled 14 million calls from individual taxpayers.

The CRA says only eight per cent of those individual inquiries were answered incorrectly. But tax experts dispute that number.

“I think the CRA needs to think very seriously if it wants to keep providing advice if it doesn’t have confidence in the advice it is giving,” said Aaron Wudrick, the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

He said the real problem is that the Canadian tax code has become unreadable and unnecessarily complex.

“Shouldn't be surprising that Canadians need to ask for help to do their taxes and furthermore, that the CRA itself would find it difficult to understand the tax code," he said.

Liberal deputy leader Ralph Goodale said another issue is the repeated government cutbacks at the CRA.

“When you degrade the back office to the point where they can’t even give good advice, then that has very immediate front-line consequences for taxpayers,” he said.

The CRA said filing a formal complaint is always an option for taxpayers or businesses who believe they’ve been incorrectly advised.

But the head of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said that can backfire.

“You raise your hand and then you are potentially the subject of an audit,” Dan Kelly said.

The Office of Taxpayers’ Ombudsman is another complaint mechanism. But while the department is staffed, the ombudsman position has been vacant since last June.

Findley’s office said the process of appointing an ombudsman is “ongoing,” but the office continues to respond to taxpayers’ complaints.

With a report from CTV’s Peter Akman