Federal taxpayers’ ombudsperson on outreach trip to Iqaluit
François Boileau hopes to better understand barriers people face in filing taxes, improve CRA service
François Boileau, Canada’s taxpayers’ ombudsperson, is visiting Iqaluit this week to understand issues residents face in filing taxes and to improve CRA service in the territory. (Photo by Jeff Pelletier)
The man responsible for addressing public complaints about the Canada Revenue Agency is in Iqaluit this week, hoping to learn about barriers people face in filing their taxes and find ways to improve the agency’s services in the North.
François Boileau, Canada’s taxpayers’ ombudsperson, estimates 10 per cent of Canadians don’t file taxes for a number of reasons that aren’t malicious.
Sometimes, he said, it’s as simple as people not knowing how to file them. Or because taxpayers have concerns about their cash flow.
However, Boileau said, non-filers in the North are missing out on potential tax benefits. That includes the Canada child benefit, a tax-free monthly payment to eligible families with children under 18 years of age, and Northern residents’ deductions that are based on higher residency and travel costs.
“By meeting with not-for-profit organizations here [in Iqaluit], I’m trying to come up with ideas and solutions on how best we can approach this issue and make sure we [reach out to people] to file,” Boileau said in an interview.
“That’s really important for me to be here, to listen.”
He can’t say exactly how many residents in the North don’t file their taxes, but he hopes to find out and include that information in a future annual report.
Tax filing is a “complex” task, Boileau acknowledged.
To make it easier, he said the CRA is supposed to enable free tax-filing support services. Boileau wants to learn the extent to which those services are available in the North.
For one thing, he wants to find out how many free tax clinics are being offered.
“If so, does it work well? If not, what can we do to make sure that it’s more known to the public?”
In Iqaluit, Boileau will meet with Nunavut Finance Minister Lorne Kusugak, as well as representatives from organizations such as the Uquutaq Society and Nasaijit Services Ltd.
He’s also set to drop in on Service Canada staff in Iqaluit to see what information is provided to residents.
Boileau said he’s on a mission of outreach. When he heads back south on Thursday, he hopes to bring with him first-hand information to better improve the way the CRA provides its services in the North.
“This is a reality we don’t know in the south. That’s why we’re here, is to find out more,” he said
“We’ve seen stats for the North, but it doesn’t show the human side of it.”
Laziness is my biggest barrier and I don’t want to pay h&r black $200 to do it. It should be free
then use turbotax – just input your tax docs.
Do it yourself, *Poof* it is free…
How about thanks to the Post Office, probably everyone is getting audited this year to ‘prove’ we live here.
Ha! CRA does not even recognize the new 2H0 postal code.
We are getting audited more than ever because the CRA decided to make things ‘easier’ for Northern residents by establishing an artificially deflated ‘lowest-return airfare’ amount. So claiming your northern travel benefits is a bigger headache than ever.
I get it that Iqaluit is the absolute epicentre of Nunavut as far as government is concerned and that the rest of Nunavut is just some scattered people, if they even know we exist but why not come to the West or Central or a more remote Baffin Community if you actually want to understand struggle.
Why go to the absolute most serviced community to use that as your baseline?
Most people here have the most simplistic returns in Canada. Very few even have investments or investment property, etc. It’s a T4 or a T4A, maybe child support, UCCB, etc. Basic things. Yet there’s no education in high school on how to file a basic return and because of the Northern amount most people will get refunds that are partially lost to places the The Northern who will give instant cash for taking a good chunk of your return. If you have very very basic tax knowlage that could be thought in school you could use free Turbo Tax and get your refund within two weeks via direct deposit and not lose a ton of money to predatory places like The Northern or H&R Block.
I mean Turbo Tax these days will auto populate nearly your entier return if you have a CRA My Self Service account, but again that’s not taught anywhere and as a result places just clean up off people’s tax returns when they should be getting the money or people done file at all because nothing was ever taught.
A real shame.
“Yet there’s no education in high school on how to file a basic return”
I took personal finance math in high school in Ontario and learned how to file my taxes. It is easily one of my least used high school credits. If I had taken a more intensive math stream maybe I would have made enough money before 30 to actually use my basic understanding of tax law and amortization schedules.
I’m not saying kids shouldn’t have that option available. Just that it won’t be the panacea that people pretend it will be.
I’ll teach my kids financial literacy myself, so they can better spend their brief education learning things that will make them enough money to actually need it.
It doesn’t need to be a course, there’s typically some sort of required life skills course in high school, that’s a non elective and you don’t have to learn to paper file anymore. Just how to use any of the many available free programs, use CRA My Self Service, some basic financial literacy and how to use auto populate. We’re talking fairly minimal amount of time investment now since it’s so easy compared to the paper file days manually carrying through box numbers to the next sheets. If you have a t4 and you need to populate 2222 it’s a sub 10 minute return.
Parents are not going to teach financial literacy at home here because they themselves do not know. That’s evident by the lack of unfilled adult returns.
Here’s a complaint: how about, before CRA staff demand proof I’m a northern resident for like the fifth year in a row, they consider the fact that to get a hold of me they called up an organization with “Nunavut” in the name, to an office clearly identified as being in a Nunavut community, on a random day and were able to get me on the phone, in that office, in Nunavut.
François Boileau,
Go visit someplace else in Nunavut. Iqaluit is the Ottawa od Nunavut. Ask people in Arviat, or Pangnirtung, or Taloyoak what dificulties they face doing their taxes.
Difficulties like not being able to get forms or instructions in the language they know.
Difficulties like not being able to get to a CRA website because the Internet does not work.
Difficulties like postal service being almost non-existent, often for weeks.
Difficulties like being kept on hold by Service Canada until their cellphone battery dies.
Difficulties like not being able to claim transit deduction because there is no transit and not being able to claim child care deduction because there is no day cate except Mom.
Go to “real nunavut” like a real inuit community and he won’t be able drink ten dollar coffee and to take nice picture on the porch of black heart cafe. Guess maybe he interviewed a few people at black heart mostly people with university degrees, –> go to real nunavut with no government workers & most people never even get grade 7 or 8 and can’t figure this stuff out. Heres what it really looks like: Nothing but a visit to brag that he went to nunavut and get a few photo ops , not much different then Justin trudeau visits
I moved north years ago. It took about an hour of reading to understand the northern tax and vacation credits. I file my taxes for free with an online provider under wealthsimple after laughing at the prices HR block and others ask for in Iqaluit.
.
I always found it interesting that people would get upset when CRA asks them for supporting information because you need to have all that together to calculate the numbers for your return. Proving residency is really not that much of challenging. People in Nunavut don’t get that most Canadians do not get four and sometimes five figure refunds, so of course CRA checks. this work is really not that hard. How long does it take to put together your vacation receipts, a lease, a drivers license and some boarding passes? An hour? It’s a joke honestly.
What you just said shows you have decided to learn absolutely nothing about the people or understand their issues since you decided to move here and opted to live in your own superiority bubble which isn’t surprising since we’re talking Iqaluit it appears based on your comment, which may surprise you but isn’t the entirety of Nunavut.
CRA bulletins are not published in inuktitut or Inuvialuktun. While the % of people who can carry an English conversation has greatly increased since the early 2000’s reading is entirely different and reading tax forms, and tax requirements is very different because much of it does not have exact and direct translations into inuktitut or Inuvialuktun. Go back to earlier and mid 2000’s and the published statistics were 9 of 10 inuit had below levels of english literacy to be able to function in english society, that stat has improved clearly, but it has miles to go yet.
We didn’t even have cellphone and Internet coverage in some communities until 5 years ago in 2018.
I think your comment of take and hour and read some tax information on CRA’s website, misses the mark by about a mile when it comes at actually understanding issues and was more of a comment to try to flex your own perceived intelligence to be honest.
No Missed the Mark, you have just highlighted the issue – Canadians who can’t be bothered to learn one of their official languages and engage with their country. This is one of the true failures of the Nunavut education system.
I have little sympathy for Canadians, be they Inuk or recent immigrants, who can’t be bothered to make the effort to learn one of our common languages necessary to access services.
But only around 4 in 10 have even completed high school as adults, and those beyond the age of 44 that number plummets. We’re not even talking 30 years from when people were living in smaller communities that eventually got consolidated into larger ones, many of which had people that never went to schools because there was not even a school there to begin with. This isn’t some far thing in distant history, this is recent history, lots of generations still living that would not have spoken any english and not been part of any systems at all in Canada.
Its pretty absurd to sit there and say, well their fault for not learning english while you move to their territory and I guarantee put zero effort into learning inuktitut or Inuvialuktun.
I would think there’s some onus on the Canadian Government to get things in order. You’re asking a population of people who don’t read english to assimilate to a system, well do a better job. That could mean sending our CRA workers to each community that have a translator with them to aid in returns and teach, that could mean creating a system that auto-completes simplistic returns.
What isn’t helpful or really productive is saying, this isn’t a problem, go read for an hour, when statistically, yes it is a problem because there’s clearly a significant amount of unfilled, hence the article to begin with.
> lots of generations still living that would not have spoken any english and not been part of any systems at all in Canada.
So you’re saying 30 years ago that people had no contact with the outside world? And that’s your excuse for current generations not being on their kids asses about being in school and completing all 12 years?
Your comment reeks of ignorance and privilege
I just wanted to respond to the usually nonsense that is spewed out over Nunavut Facebook and news articles about how “you don’t understand anything” or “you’re so privileged”. Blah blah blah. I cannot hear you over the sound of the jet on my first class flight to Rome I am paying with my tax refund. Keep making excuses.
Not really understanding the major issue with taxes and the CRA’s guy coming here. He can’t do anything about cellphone service and internet, like people have complaining about in this string. If you have issues your cellphone, well sounds like a me problem. Call your internet service provider about the internet being crappy, also you can go to the local library to file your taxes. Communities have their GLO to help them with these types of issues. People need to try and help themselves and each other before complaining. Everything in life is not handed to you, work for it and you will succeed if you try hard enough.
There should just be a one-page form that we can fill out every year, Tell CRA your Social Insurance Number – now they have your name and date of birth; Tell them marital status, number of dependents and Province/Territory of residence.
CRA already knows your income from their copies of your T4’s, etc. Why do we need to tell them?
The vast majority in Nunavut residents have very simple tax returns, yet many don’t have the education or means to file either on-line or on paper.
The paper forms get unnecessarily more complicated every year. Make it simpler. Let CRA do the math, and with the basic information we give them on a simple form THEY can figure out your deductions and taxes owing or refund. CRA does have computers don’t they?
That is ultimately I think the direction that CRA is going for simplistic returns. Its already essentially being piloted by having tax software automatically populate via uploading all slips by connection the a CRA My Connect Account. Where it fails is when you get into people who hold investments, investment properties, etc. Often cost bases don’t upload properly, issues with T3’s and T5’s, especially if you’re dealing with many, lots of issues with T5008’s not reporting correctly because it could have been denominated in a different currency, the list goes on.
But it is getting there for people who don’t have those more complex things. That essentially leaves VTA’s which sadly has been dumbed down to the point where its actually not near as advantageous as it once was under the new rules so I can see them just creating an auto amount for each northern person eventually for that which would eliminate issues and then you just have your residency dates if you for instance moved to or from a Zone 1 or Zone 2 area in the year to calculate your daily amount.
We are getting there, just not quite yet and in the meantime I think that many communities could do with some live assistance as in CRA sending tax prep people to communities during tax time. The federal gov’t certainly uses money in worse ways……
Why should we have to file taxes ourselves when the CRA already has all our information, like the T4s? Many countries in Europe and elsewhere, their government fills out the tax forms for the individuals, the taxpayer just has to review it and sign, all for free. The CRA knows all the tax rules and what we are entitled to, why should we waste our time trying to figure them out or pay companies to do it?
The CRA doesn’t know how much an Inuit hunter profited by selling his “harvest” for “extremely high prices”
Oh wait… I bet they forgot to file for that, didn’t they? All’s well when the EMT’s don’t lie. 😀