As if it weren’t bad enough to get a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency, a study confirms that tax notices are poorly organized, confusing, unprofessional, unduly severe, bureaucratic, one-sided and dense.
The findings come from an internal evaluation of some of the 130 million pieces of mail sent by tax officials each year to businesses, charitable groups and individual taxpayers.
As a result of the confusing mail, taxpayers swamp the agency’s call centres or send thousands of letters asking for clarification.
Benefits sometime cut off without cause
In addition, Canadians who receive government cheques through various social programs sometimes get cut off without cause because they don’t understand unintelligible letters the agency sends asking for information.
The problem appears to stem from form letters which are difficult to modify. The agency promises to improve its communications and to ask Canadians how to make them better.
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