Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plan to let the Canada Revenue Agency automatically file millions of Canadians’ tax returns is facing backlash from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which says the month-long consultation preceding the rollout was a “sham” designed to rubber-stamp a power grab by bureaucrats.
The CRA’s consultation ran for only one month, from September 9 to October 9, ending just a day before Carney’s announcement on Friday. The consultation sought online feedback from individuals and organizations about expanding “automatic tax filing” services.
The government says the program, starting in 2026, will help up to 5.5 million low-income Canadians receive benefits they’re missing, such as the GST/HST credit and Canada Child Benefit.
Critics, however, say Ottawa’s timeline shows the outcome was pre-determined.
“Carney plans to give CRA more power with automatic tax filing,” said Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s Federal Director Franco Terrazzano. “Trusting the taxman to do your return is like trusting your dog to protect your burger. CRA acting as both tax filer and tax collector is a serious conflict of interest.”
Terrazzano mocked the idea that meaningful input was possible within hours of the consultation closing. “There’s no way bureaucrats pulled an all-nighter reading through thousands of submissions before sending Carney out to make an announcement the next morning,” he said. “Asking Canadians for their opinion and then ignoring them isn’t a good look. This was a sham consultation.”
The federation argues the plan will give unprecedented control to the same agency responsible for collecting taxes. “The CRA can barely answer the phone, so Carney shouldn’t be giving those bureaucrats more busy work,” Terrazzano said. “The CRA is a bloated mess, and Carney should be cutting the cost of bureaucracy, not scheming up ways to give it more power over taxpayers.”
Related bloated mess.
CRA is looking for work for the army of bureaucrats hired under the Spawn’s reign. The CRA has 59,000 employees while the IRS, with 10 times the filing processing, has 99,000 employees. Five out of six CRA bureaucrats could be eliminated if they were as productive as the IRS.
This 10% number really has to go. It is old, from before Canada imported the third world, and before Trudeau, Guilbault & Co. destroyed the economy. The US population is 9 times Canada’s, it’s economy is 14 times Canada’s (yes, they really are that much better off). It used to be 10 times more people and 10 times the economy, but no longer. Socialist shitholes don’t come cheap.
What do you expect from the first, number one bureaucrat, certain Carney.
Exactly.
Maybe he should just be referred to as Number One.
I bet he’s like that.
I would prefer to call him Number Two.
As he’s yet another fcking Turd.
City of Calgary is the same. It makes a decision then asks for “public input”. The exercise is a means of finding at least one concurring opinion.
After the “consultation” it announces what it intended to do in the first place.
Kabuki theatre for stupid people who honestly think their opinion matters.
Is this really just a cover for all the illegals and foreign workers imported because the Somali`s `working` don`t care about filing their tax returns?
The Government of Canada and it’s sole owner, the King of Canada, are completely correct and on solid legal ground. The Crown does not need the peasant serf Subjects opinion or input on anything, including who its leaders are. Canada is private property and will be administered as the owners see fit. If you do not like it then,
1. Asset sovereignty
2. Defend asserted sovereignty with your life if required
3. Re-constitute Canada as a Republic with inalienable Rights.
4. You and your Grandchildren begin enjoying the satisfaction of self-government and civil ownership of your nation.
When it comes to average wage earners for whom income tax is automatically deducted along with a raft of payroll deductions, I’m on the fence about this one. The other issue is the automatic filing of T forms from financial institutions. Since Revenue Canada already has this information, why don’t they just send you a tax invoice instead of seeing if they get to pounce on you for forgetting to file a T slip?
CRA already does that…..if you get T4 slips for example and you don’t file a return, they will assess you according to the T4 slips. They will also charge you a late filing penalty and interest if you owe anything.
When you get auto filed, you loose the opportunity to claim any deductions, because they base your assessment only on your T4 and other income slips. Auto filing is a scheme to bleed even more money from us. The late filing penalty is akin to a loan shark operation in terms of the amount they demand.
I believe the push for auto filing is a direct result from millions of Canadians choosing to no longer support the Liberals and their wasting our money.
(pssst: they keeeeeeeeep vooooooooooooting fooooooorrrr iiiiiit!)
The CRA doesn’t care if most of us file a return, we only do so to claim money, already taken off of paycheque, back in deductions. Same with low earners, no filing = no rebates: GST, etc.
A distant associate of mine worked for RevCan/CRA but somehow found the work too stressful, so he began passing his resume to some of the many businesses he saw advertising for accountants with tax experience. None of them responded. So he kept on sending, and after years of effort, he finally got an interview. He was told to stop bothering the HR departments of the land because hiring him would incur the risk of an RCMP raid, and the officers would know exactly where to look for the “evidence”.
It makes sense, too, to keep those tens of thousands of drones on the government payroll, because if they were laid off, they would never find another job, thus making the unemployment statistics look bad.
We won’t get out of this mess easily.
Yet, major accounting firms consistently raid the CRA for its better employees. Many of the tax consultants I have met who worked for the big guys started out with Rev Can/CRA.
L – If the federal government can file income tax for the 5.5 million low income. Will the gov’t. soon start casting ballots for those, who don’t vote; because they no longer believe their vote makes a difference? Then bulk mail …err deliver them to themselves to count?
How many of said proxy voters would ever know? Especially the ones, who are deceased. After all, the recently deceased. Those, who trusted the government enough, while they were alive, to believe the government is the source of all truth. Add in those alive, who still believe that and Carney can rule; until the International Monetary Fund dictates budget spending, as they do for failed states?
Trust the government, who subverted the economy so badly. That this is the first generation in Cdn. history, who will never own their own home and only be allowed access to Central Bank Digital Currency. If their Socialist Credit Score is high enough?
I got the feeling this “plan” all started the day the PMO decided there must be a way to start implementing UBI without having to pass legislation.
NEVER trust CRA.
Decades ago I made a small capital gain, for which there was no taxation. But when filling out my income tax form, it had a space for “any other income”. But nowhere subsequent to that space to deduct it from taxable income. So I called the CRA office to ask if I had to include the capital gain. The agent said “You should”. But do I have to? “Well, you should”. That’s all I could get out of him. So I called an accountant. He laughed and said no, do not enter your capital gain.
That’s when I lost any trust in them. Since then I have seen much, much worse treatment of taxpayers by CRA
Had a close relative or two working with CRA twenty years ago who mentioned this could be done then, and they believed it actually would help most low-middle to low income households.
With most in that class the T4 and bank statements were all they had to file, and CRA already had them.
Case in point was an Uncle, Army vet with expenses, who was not claiming all he could. This would help him. Another is a neighbour whose niece was doing his taxes and missed that TD and National Trust are two different companies and did file all the paper work. Took me over a year to straighten it out get his fines back.
My only problems with this, and it is the common issues with any government, is overreach and project creep.
Current forms of taxation, with all of its complications, is bureaucrat-effected smokescreen for how much we actually pay and where it actually goes. As well, many taxes are counter-productive, punishing the natural urge to improve personal standing, consequently “raising all boats”.
The ONLY justifiable tax is one that recognizes how the nation provides fertile ground for opportunity and well-being. That HAS TO BE a levy on the individual’s participation in the economy — represented by the “dollar”. One tax paid at the point of a transaction .. any transaction, and all government finances rolled into one tax rate. Such a system will be fair to all, will cost far less than the bureaucrat-heavy swamp, and will give every citizen pause to consider well before voting.
Of course there is much more to be said about how this will work, but just think first about the eminent fairness and transparency of such a scheme.
What a giant load of horseshit.
Carnage is an evil control freak and the CRA is the epitome of an evil bureaucracy.
They think it’s all their money and that they’re just letting you keep some.
And don’t think it isn’t a precedent.
As Larry and joseph write: Central Bank Digital Currency and UBI.
Fckers.
The anti-Canadian Federal Liberal Government is run by ruthless authoritarians and propped up by nutless cowards and mewling quims.
Shithole.
this is an old story but unique.
cra aka canada revenue came at me THREE TIMES for taxes l
-didnt owe or
-already paid.
during one of them l moved.
my strategy was to show up at the downtown hamilton office, get told ‘pay it anyway if you dont owe it you will get it back’ whereupon l concluded no, ‘sumbuddy’ would ‘declare’ paying it was an ADMISSION l owed it and would thus keep it.
l laid out over a years correspondence and point to the tax return THEY ‘recalculated’ showing instead of MOVING income from one category to another they COPIED it and falsely increased taxes ‘owed’
l then threatened to go to the newspapers and point out they wasted all the taxes l did pay going after more l didnt even owe.
they backed down. because l had documentation and lots of it.
Was talking to one of our customers at work. He has a very close friend, a farmer, who was told by the pricks that he would be audited. He warned them not to do it, but they came at him with both barrels. When the smoke had cleared they owed him a cheque for ~$50,000.
He contacted them the next year, told them it had been fun & asked if they could please audit him again. He hasn’t been audited since.