The Canada Revenue Agency is finally picking up the phone, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get the tax help you need.

This year’s CRA report card, published by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, found that while more callers are getting through to agents, the wait times are longer and when they do get through, more than 40 per cent get incomplete or inaccurate information.

Corinne Pohlmann, senior vice president of national affairs for the CFIB, an association representing more than 100,000 small and medium-sized businesses, says dealing with the CRA is a huge headache for small business owners, many of whom don’t have accounting departments, or time to sit on the phone waiting for an hour during the work day.

“They’re trying to do the right thing, and they’re being given the wrong information. This can have real consequences,” she said.

“Tax compliance is the No. 1 red tape issue for small businesses.”

The CFIB tested the CRA’s responsiveness by asking volunteers across the country to place 200 test calls in June of 2019. It found that the average wait time for a front line agent was 15 minutes, up from two minutes in 2012, while the average wait time for a senior agent was a shocking 59 minutes.

However, it wasn’t all bad news. For one thing, more callers were actually getting through. In 2019, the CRA got a new phone system designed to minimize busy signals and dropped calls. In 2012, the CFIB found 25 per cent of callers got a busy signal. In 2016, that figure was 32 per cent. This time around? Not a single caller got a busy signal, though nine per cent were dropped because they system mistakenly said the call centre was closed.

“The CRA welcomes all feedback from taxpayers, including reports such as the one completed by the CFIB, in order to improve our services to Canadians. We know that tax filing can be complex and taxpayers rely on the CRA to provide timely and accurate information to help them meet their tax requirements,” said CRA spokesperson Etienne Biram.

Biram pointed to improvements the CRA is working on, including informing callers of the estimated wait times for transferred calls, and a callback feature for callers to keep their priority in the queue without staying on hold, and a chatbot to help make it easier to find information online.

“These are just first steps. We know there is more work to be done, and we are taking steps to better meet Canadians’ needs,” Biram said.

“Before, you had a problem even getting through. Now, everybody gets through, but it’s taking a long time to get the information,” said Pohlmann.

In 2017, a report from then-Auditor General Michael Ferguson slammed the CRA’s performance, finding that only about a third of calls to the call centres were properly answered by CRA agents.

“Taxpayers need timely access to accurate information to help them prepare their tax returns and to ensure that their benefits are correct. For callers who do not have Internet access, the call centres may be the only way for them to ask for information,” Ferguson wrote in his report to Parliament.

While there’s still plenty of room for improvement, Pohlmann believes the CRA is at least starting to make an effort when it comes to customer service. She pointed to the March, 2018 appointment of Mireille Laroche as the CRA’s first-ever Chief Service Officer as evidence of the changing mindset.

“I do think they’re trying to make it a bit more user-friendly,” Pohlmann said.

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“Although we continue to introduce new services to make it easier for Canadians to file their taxes and have access to the credits and benefits they are entitled to, we know that we are not fully meeting their needs. We know that we need to continue to improve,” the CRA says on its CSO page.

The CRA also acknowledged that “clients receive poor customer service” and that the information they’re given “can be difficult to understand or contradictory.”

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