Canadians getting bad advice from the taxman, when they can get through: auditor
OTTAWA — Some taxpayers may be filing tax returns using erroneous information supplied by the Canada Revenue Agency, the federal auditor general warned Tuesday after tabling an audit that found just getting through to the department’s helplines is an even greater challenge than the government lets on.
Michael Ferguson’s latest report to Parliament said callers all too often get a busy signal or a message to hang up and try back later when they try to contact the taxman by telephone — and when they do get through, they’re not guaranteed of getting the right answers to their questions.
“When we called the call centres of the Canada Revenue Agency and we posed our questions, about 30 per cent of the responses that we got back were not right,” Ferguson told a news conference — a “very concerning” finding that could be causing problems for Canadians who file their own returns.
“We just have to assume that if people are getting wrong answers, then sometimes they are filling out the tax return based on those wrong answers.”