The Canada Revenue Agency claimed that, during the recent tax season, the average taxpayer waited only nine minutes on the phone to speak with an agent..According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the Agency had previously acknowledged falsifying customer service data..“The average time taxpayers spent in the agent queue for their first point of contact with an Agency client service representative was nine minutes and seven seconds,” the Agency wrote in an Inquiry of Ministry tabled in the Commons. .According to the Inquiry, business tax filers experienced an average wait time of four minutes and 42 seconds..The Agency said at the peak of tax season, from February 20 to May 1, it had 7,294 call centre agents on the job. The figures were tabled by request of New Democrat MP Niki Ashton (Churchill-Keewatinook Aski, MB)..The Inquiry noted that 23.5 million Canadians filed their tax returns electronically in a typical tax year, while 1.4 million filed paper returns..For the 2022 tax year, the most recent available data, the Agency admitted that in 947,000 cases, it did not meet its own service standard of issuing notices of assessment within eight weeks..Troubles with customer service at the Agency were first documented in a 2017 Auditor General’s report that found taxpayers had only a one in three chance of speaking to a live agent after lengthy waits. Of 53.5 million calls, a total of 29 million were dropped..Auditors noted that taxpayers usually made three calls to reach a customer service agent..“The Agency did a poor job of providing taxpayers with reasonable access to call centre agents and providing accurate information to those callers,” the Commons Public Accounts committee wrote in a 2018 report Call Centres: Canada Revenue Agency. .“Alarmingly, although the Agency reported it met its targets for both access and timeliness, its performance measures were incomplete and its call centre results were overstated.”.During the 2017 committee hearings, agency managers acknowledged that they had misrepresented customer service data, including the error rate when responding to callers with questions about the Income Tax Act. .The Agency had publicly claimed a 6% error rate, which was later found to be inaccurate..“Our internal audit showed we had an error rate of 20%,” testified Frank Vermaeten, then-deputy revenue commissioner..The Auditor General reported that the average error rate was 30%, and in certain cases, such as calculating interest on late payments, it reached as high as 84%..“What is going on with this Mickey Mouse outfit?” asked then-New Democrat MP David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre, ON)..“Monkeying around with these departmental results reports to play with the numbers to make it look good will come out. We will find you.”
The Canada Revenue Agency claimed that, during the recent tax season, the average taxpayer waited only nine minutes on the phone to speak with an agent..According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the Agency had previously acknowledged falsifying customer service data..“The average time taxpayers spent in the agent queue for their first point of contact with an Agency client service representative was nine minutes and seven seconds,” the Agency wrote in an Inquiry of Ministry tabled in the Commons. .According to the Inquiry, business tax filers experienced an average wait time of four minutes and 42 seconds..The Agency said at the peak of tax season, from February 20 to May 1, it had 7,294 call centre agents on the job. The figures were tabled by request of New Democrat MP Niki Ashton (Churchill-Keewatinook Aski, MB)..The Inquiry noted that 23.5 million Canadians filed their tax returns electronically in a typical tax year, while 1.4 million filed paper returns..For the 2022 tax year, the most recent available data, the Agency admitted that in 947,000 cases, it did not meet its own service standard of issuing notices of assessment within eight weeks..Troubles with customer service at the Agency were first documented in a 2017 Auditor General’s report that found taxpayers had only a one in three chance of speaking to a live agent after lengthy waits. Of 53.5 million calls, a total of 29 million were dropped..Auditors noted that taxpayers usually made three calls to reach a customer service agent..“The Agency did a poor job of providing taxpayers with reasonable access to call centre agents and providing accurate information to those callers,” the Commons Public Accounts committee wrote in a 2018 report Call Centres: Canada Revenue Agency. .“Alarmingly, although the Agency reported it met its targets for both access and timeliness, its performance measures were incomplete and its call centre results were overstated.”.During the 2017 committee hearings, agency managers acknowledged that they had misrepresented customer service data, including the error rate when responding to callers with questions about the Income Tax Act. .The Agency had publicly claimed a 6% error rate, which was later found to be inaccurate..“Our internal audit showed we had an error rate of 20%,” testified Frank Vermaeten, then-deputy revenue commissioner..The Auditor General reported that the average error rate was 30%, and in certain cases, such as calculating interest on late payments, it reached as high as 84%..“What is going on with this Mickey Mouse outfit?” asked then-New Democrat MP David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre, ON)..“Monkeying around with these departmental results reports to play with the numbers to make it look good will come out. We will find you.”
