taxpayer relief blog
“You Worked At CRA So … Can You Help With My Tax Audit?”
There's no shortage of former Canada Revenue Agency employees who leverage their CRA experience in the market place. There's nothing surprising or unexpected about that. I happen to be one of those people. I worked as a taxpayer relief adjudicator and senior...
Canadian Tax Policy
Canadian public discourse suffers no shortage of tax policy discussion. Politicians campaign on tax policy, think tanks publish reports on tax policy, advocacy groups demand changes to tax policy; coffee-shop sages ruminate on the subject. We’re awash in policy talk....
Planning For Taxes With CERB and Canada Revenue Agency
Never mind the debate about how much Canada's emergency response benefit is, or should be, or should have been. That debate is ultimately going to be irrelevant in no time at all. A more pressing reality is that too many CERB recipients may have lost sight of the fact...
How The CRA Is Handling Relief With Coronavirus
In case you aren't sufficiently bored, irritated, aggravated, etc. with hearing about the Coronavirus, here's a quick word on how things look from inside the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). Remember SARS, the Ice Storm of 1998, or the north east power outage of 2003,...
Why You Should Not File Your Own Taxes
I write applications for relief from penalty and interest on tax liabilities. It's a unique specialty in the world of tax. I know enough to know, what I don't know. I'm not an expert in tax preparation, I'm not an accountant and accordingly, I DON'T PREPARE TAXES!...
What You Don’t Know about Taxpayer Relief
If you work in the Accounting, Tax Preparation, or Tax Law industries, you've probably heard of the Taxpayer Relief provisions of the Income Tax Act (220.(3.1) of the ITA). And there's probably a reasonable percentage of citizens who have an idea that they can ask for...
Canada Revenue Agency Statement of Account
Not a week goes by that I don’t encounter the deep and continuing frustration of Canadian taxpayers experiencing the dark and mysterious world of a CRA statement of account. For most folks, the Agency’s accounting of assessments, reassessments, payments, penalties,...
What is Taxpayer Relief?
On a fairly consistent basis, I’m met with blank stares when I tell people I am a consultant and writer, specializing in Taxpayer Relief. Most people have no idea what the term means. And why would they? Unless you’ve got a tax problem, chances are you’d have no...
Canada Revenue Agency Fairness Legislation
You may have heard the term “Fairness” in reference to Canada Revenue Agency’s Taxpayer Relief Guidelines. You might wonder why that is. Well, the answer is quite simple really. When the provisions were introduced, the taxpayer relief legislation was originally called...
Truths and Misconceptions About the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)
Having spent more than a decade as a senior collection enforcement officer with the CRA, I never cease to be amazed at the wild misconceptions the Canadian public have regarding Canada Revenue Agency and tax collection matters. Every month, I get phone calls from...
