CRA receives poor grade for quality of service
Report finds inaccurate information, soaring wait times but fewer busy signals
Canadian businesses calling the Canada Revenue Agency frequently face long wait times or are given inaccurate information — or both — according to a scathing new report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, which handed the agency a D grade on both those measures.
“Unfortunately, it seems like the number of Canadians that can rely on information from the CRA is dropping. They are not known for being forgiving to taxpayers, but they routinely provide incomplete information to us,” said Dan Kelly, president and CEO of the CFIB.
The report, by authors Tina Barton and Michelle Auger was based on 200 calls placed to the CRA’S business inquiry line between June 3 and June 28 of 2019.
About half of the calls could not be completed due to excessive wait times or because they were blocked or abruptly disconnected, the report stated. This figure stood in sharp contrast to previous CFIB audit from 2016, which found 30 per cent of calls incomplete.
Those who did connect with a CRA agent faced a 40-per-cent chance of receiving incomplete or incorrect information — just 60 per cent of callers who got their queries resolved received “complete” or “above and beyond” guidance from the agent, the report found.
“The area where there has been a big change is the level of accuracy of answers has gone down at the CRA. That is really disappointing,” said Kelly.
This is the fourth time the CFIB has audited the quality of CRA service, and the first report since the CRA introduced a new phone system last year that attempted to improve the agency’s customer service, particularly the problem of busy signals.
According to the report, average wait times to speak with agents had gone up significantly between 2016 (the last time the audit was conducted) and 2019. In 2016, the average time on hold was just two minutes, while the longest wait time was 15 minutes. Three years later, the average wait time had soared to 15 minutes to speak with the first agent, and an additional 59 minutes to speak with a second agent.
“Just 59 per cent of calls reached a front line agent within the CRA service standard of 15 minutes,” Barton and Auger wrote. “This meant that a higher percentage of calls could not be resolved compared to previous years because callers could not spare hours waiting for an answer, similar to the reality for small business owners,” they added.
Since changing its phone system in 2018 after an overwhelming number of complaints from Canadians who simply could not access an agent, the agency’s “busy signal” problem has markedly improved.
For example, in 2016, 32 per cent of calls encountered busy signals, and 28 per cent had to abandon those calls due to repeated busy signals but in 2019, there was a single call from the 200 call sample set that encountered busy signals.
“The positive news is that there are fewer busy signals and fewer dropped calls than before. That was certainly something that many of our members were experiencing,” said Kelly.
Kelly, however, remains concerned about the frequency of inaccurate information received by callers.
The authors of the report posited four questions to the CRA on a number of tax issues.
One of the questions centred around the rules on how and when a consulting company that is providing services across Canada should apply GST or HST — more than half the agents got the answer wrong.
Another question posed was regarding whether a garden tool manufacturer buying used machinery to increase their manufacturing capacity would be eligible for the Capital Cost Allowance tax benefit — just half of the agents knew the answer to the question.
“It is puzzling as to why the CRA call agents are getting things wrong. I do know some bright minds that are working really hard to improve things and we have met some of them,” Kelly said.
He believes there is a lack of accountability within the CRA that leads to staff repeatedly not knowing their facts or dispensing incomplete information. “In the private sector, those people would be fired,” he said.
When contacted by the Financial Post, Etienne Biram, a spokesperson for the CRA said that the agency has already put in place a plan to improve call centre services, after a May 2019 report by the Office of the Auditor General that concluded millions of calls from Canadians seeking information about government services were not being answered.
“The CRA is already working on improvements, such as 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. We are also making continuous improvements to our web content, and will soon introduce a chatbot to help make it easier for Canadians to find information online,” Biram said.