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Fortunately, the latest mistake will have no bearing on taxes owing for 2017, the year Canada Revenue Agency is currently assessing. But employees with the wrong information could be making plans to contribute more to their RRSP this year than is allowed.

PSPC said it is still trying to find the cause of the T4 error. In the meantime, PSPC will issue amended tax slips. After Canada Revenue Agency processes the revised T4s and reassesses employees’ tax returns, employees will see their RRSP contribution room for 2018 corrected.

It’s not clear how many employees will be affected by the erroneous T4s, but there seem to be quite a few. For one thing, we know that tens of thousands of government employees received retroactive payments of various sorts last year, thanks to other types of errors in the Phoenix system, such as a failure to top up pay following a promotion or transfer. Then there’s this: PSPC said in the email it intends to produce amended 2017 tax slips “once a week until the end of April 2018.” That sounds like a hefty series of batch corrections.

What to do if you are one of the affected employees? You can ask for an amended tax slip “through the Phoenix self service” or through the Canada Revenue Agency website (assuming you are registered online there).

CRA might be the better bet. After all, on March 1, federal departments were warning their employees that access to the Phoenix pay system was “temporarily unavailable” thanks to high volumes. PSPC said it was working hard to fix this problem, too.