As a follow up to my earlier blog this morning. Read the following and then ask yourself; Does CRA go too far?”

Dan White

To learn more about CRA abuse and what you can do, go to www.taxauditsolutions.ca

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Taxpayer ombudsman can’t fix everything at CRA

Paul Dube and his staff win some, lose some while taking on thousands of cases

By Don Cayo, Vancouver SunFebruary 19, 2010 2:06 AM

It has been five years since I wrote my first column in what has become an long-running, intermittent series on taxpayer complaints about the Canada Revenue Agency.

It’s two years this Sunday since lawyer Paul Dube was appointed by the federal government as Canada’s first taxpayers’ ombudsman with a mandate to do much the same thing, to expose and rectify those complaints.

I had some success with my first case: CRA backed down from a ruling that would have re-interpreted old rules and imposed a six-figure reassessment on three Vancouver fruit sellers. I’ve been as lucky with several cases since.

Nonetheless, I’m pleased to report that Dube and his staff are batting quite a lot better than me. They’ve taken on a few thousand cases, compared with my few dozen. They’ve righted a gratifying number of wrongs, although he doesn’t have a precise count.

Still, I’m left with the uncomfortable feeling the tools Dube has been given are no surer or sharper than mine. In the end, he and I can both only scold, me in print and he more privately, mandarin-to-mandarin, so to speak. Beyond that, all either of us can do is hope CRA will do the right thing.

Ultimately, despite what Dube describes as a “formidable” power to assume guilt and impose crippling penalties, there’s no affordable, effective check on when CRA acts capriciously or decides to dig in. He and I are in the same boat in that we can say CRA really should fix some mess or other, but we can’t say they must.

And Dube has no power to order a financial break for people who’ve been ill-treated.

This last point is important.

Dube told me when he was in the city this month that communication is the most common cause of problems he encounters. I sort of agree, only I call it a failure to communicate, when taxpayers can’t reach the people who are making life-altering decisions about their files, when CRA won’t answer valid questions for months or years, or when answers change every time a new guy is assigned to the file.

The recurring theme in the stories I hear is how fast CRA’s demands for money ratchet up while the bureaucracy’s collective thumbs are twiddling.

If Dube were to look into many of the cases that come across my desk and find that policies were ignored or misapplied, what good would it do? Because Dube doesn’t have the authority to adjust the amount said to be owing.

Nor does he have the power to do anything about policies that are wrong-headed, although he’s sometimes successful in pleading for a break when an across-the-board policy yields a patently unfair result as a result of unique circumstances.

The upshot, as was noted last fall by the headline on my 39th column on the CRA, is that the main option open to aggrieved taxpayers is to “pay up and shut up or pay up and beg.”

And, as if this level of uncertainty isn’t bad enough, it gets worse. A survey commissioned by Dube found that 42 per cent of Canadians fear repercussions if they complain about CRA.

So I’m pleased that he got the job and that he’s able to look into several hundred cases a month, and resolve many of them.

And I wish him well in his quest to become better-known to Canadians and increase this volume to whatever it needs to be.

Dube’s phone number is 1-866-586-3839. His office accepts only complaints about CRA service, although, he says, that is interpreted quite broadly.

dcayo@vancouversun.com

See Don Cayo’s blog on tax issues and one on globalization s at vancouversun.com/blogs