Here is a funny CRA case. It reminds me of a case where CRA refused to issue a refund due to “Missing Information.” They could not tell me what information was missing, and could not issue the refund due to the file to memo that stated that there was information missing.

After me convincing them that they had no choice, I finally got my cheque.

Sometimes bureaucracy can be hilarious, frustrating, and perplexing.

To learn more about CRA behavior and what to do about it to solve your tax problems,

go to  [1] CRA Tax Audits    http://taxauditsolutions.ca/cms/index.php/cra-tax-audits/

Dan White

Revenue Canada Strikes Again! By Scooter Clark

This situation would be rather funny if I hadn’t just spent four hours trying to document and resolve it.

I was speaking to the Canada Revenue Agency earlier today, and they told me that they owed me $362.91 because I had paid them too much a few months ago. I was quite pleased to hear that, of course. However, the guy on the phone then went on to say, “but we aren’t able to give it back to you unless you’re able to explain why you gave it to us in the first place.”

WTF?? I thought he was joking at first. He wasn’t. Actually, once I talked to him some more, it made sense - it was the “current source deductions” department, which handles money that employers have to contribute into the EI and CPP programs, and since the funds are held in trust they can’t just arbitrarily issue a refund cheque without detailed corroborating evidence.

So anyway, the long and short of the story is that I’ve spent the past four hours trying to properly document my answer, which essentially COULD have been reduced to this short paragraph:

“You sent me a notice on October 26th saying that I owed you $362.91 (with no accompanying explanation), and I was stupid enough to think that you might have been correct, so I paid it. That’s why you’ve been overpaid by $362.91.”

The only hard part was trying to say that diplomatically. Luckily, I managed to write a fourteen hundred word letter to explain the situation in excruciating detail, along with five pages of spreadsheets and printouts, so hopefully it will take them just as long to sort out as it took me to put everything together.

posted by Jonathan (Scooter) Clark @ 4/14/2010 06:19:00 PM