In a series of forthcoming articles, we will make use of the following model as the basis for discussing different relationships within the CVITP. We believe this simple model summarizes the most important relationships which make up the CVITP.
To learn more about the details, see this short explanation.
CVITP figures for the number of people assisted this year and the number of volunteers registered show a second year of poor performance, well below its peak for the 2018 tax year (2019 tax season). The poor performance last year was not surprising given the sudden imposition of public health restrictions due to COVID.
In the lead up to the 2021 tax season (2020 tax year), the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) had ample time to plan for the operation of the CVITP under public health restrictions. However, the CVITP’s performance this year was only marginally better than last year. This is despite the CRA having been allocated in recent years a large administrative budget increase for the CVITP that was intended to double the number of people assisted.
What’s going on here? We may never know the full story. Earlier this year, the CRA indicated it will not be providing any information on the CVITP in its future reports to Parliament. The timing of this decision may be purely coincidental. But one can be forgiven for thinking that the CRA’s recent poor performance on managing the CVITP might have had something to do with it.
For further analysis with numbers and our sources, see our short article here.
As mentioned in a previous article, one priority in her Supplementary Mandate Letter from the Prime Minister (dated January 2021) instructs the Minister of National Revenue to “enhance and expand the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program”. One thing the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) can do to help achieve this is through placing greater emphasis on another priority mentioned in the same letter, instructing Minister Lebouthillier to “improve the collection and analysis of disaggregated data related to supports and services offered by the CRA.”
Data needs to be collected and analyzed for at least two reasons. First, to confirm whether or not the CVITP is meeting its intended objective. And second, where the CVITP is falling short of its intended objective, to help devise strategies to ensure the program can better meet its intended objective.
We think the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) currently has two related problems with respect to CVITP data. First, it collects the wrong data and publishes too little of what it does collect. Second, this means the CRA focuses on doing the wrong things.
In this two-part series of articles, we look at data and its use in formulating strategy.
In the first article, entitled “First, the CRA Needs to Collect and Analyze the CORRECT Data”, we examine the data that is collected and analyzed on clients and their returns. We begin with the uncontroversial observation that data needs to be collected and analysed to confirm whether or not the CVITP is meeting its intended objective. We then refer to a previous article in which we argued that the CRA presently collects and reports CVITP results data which are not aligned with the purpose and in which we offered alternative performance indicators which we believe do a better job of this. We also look at the data the CRA currently collects on CVITP host organizations and volunteers – what we call the delivery infrastructure – and make some modest suggestions for additional data to be collected through the annual registration process just prior to the tax season.
In the second article, entitled “Then, the CRA Needs to Build a Strategy With a Focus on Improving EFFICIENCY”, we look at how all this data can be used to devise strategies to ensure the CVITP can better meet its intended objective. The combination of analyses of data on CVITP results and delivery infrastructure can help to inform the choice of actions to be taken. The strategic priority we focus on is increasing the number of CVITP clients. We argue that the CRA should place greater emphasis on increasing efficiencies within the existing delivery infrastructure over increasing the size of the delivery infrastructure. A few examples are offered to illustrate how data on results and delivery infrastructure could be used to do this.
With the close of the tax filing season, we did an informal survey of some of our fellow CVITP volunteers, to get their first impressions of how the tax season went. This included both new as well as returning volunteers. This article contains a summary of their impressions as well as a few of our own. We welcome hearing more about some of the lessons you have drawn from your own experience of the tax filing season.
One host organization we work with as CVITP volunteers has good connections with other social services in the local community and, through those connections, identifies chronic non-filers who are now seeking to file. A number of these cases have been forwarded to us to work on. This article covers some issues we have identified when filing for these chronic non-filers. It also highlights issues raised that the CVITP is not designed to handle but which can impact on the client’s situation. This article does not cover the mechanics of how to file for these individuals; information on this can be found in our article “How do I file a client’s returns for prior years?”
The federal government recently completed its 2021 pre-budget consultations. See our submission regarding the CVITP here.
As we reported here, in the 2020 tax season the CVITP served only 55% of the clients it had served in the previous year. The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) attributes the dramatic decline to the public health restrictions introduced in 2020 to deal with COVID.
In preparing for the forthcoming tax season, the CVITP tax clinics will be subject to similar COVID related public health restrictions. Furthermore, as of now, the CRA has given no indication that it will change the traditional filing deadline of April 30th to ensure the continuity beyond June 2021 of the many benefits which are conditional upon filing an up-to-date return. Significant changes in practices and procedures are needed to avoid an outcome similar to last year’s.
What can be learned from the experience last year which can be applied to this year’s tax season and to future years when the public health restrictions are no longer an issue?
This article identifies 16 lessons. We also invite our readers to share additional lessons drawing on their own experiences.
We find two sources of 2020 data from Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) publications that allow us to update CVITP trends on the numbers of individuals assisted, returns filed, volunteers employed and host organizations offering free tax clinics.
In this article, we show and briefly discuss: (1) the dramatic decline in individuals assisted; (2) the continuing modest upward trend in the average number of returns filed per client; (3) a modest decline in the number of volunteers registered, which may mask a collapse in the number of volunteers who were actually employed in providing services in virtual clinics; (4) a modest increase in the number of host organizations registered which may similarly mask a collapse in the number of host organizations which actually offered services through virtual clinics; and (5) a continued decline in the average number of volunteers employed per host organization. This last trend may be an early sign of future capacity constraints within the CVITP.
Volunteers are usually asked to file a client’s income tax and benefit return for the most recent tax year. However, there are also instances where volunteers may be asked to file prior years’ returns for a client who has skipped one or more tax year filings. In this article, we describe, in a series of steps, what we’ve learned from helping clients to file for prior years.
Like all federal government departments and agencies, each year the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) produces a report for Parliament after the end of the fiscal year. This report details what the CRA has done with the money Parliament has budgeted for its operations. This is the only report that parliamentarians and the Canadian public will see that shows what the CRA has done in the last fiscal year to meet its mandate.
This year is no different. On December 7, 2020, the CRA published online its Departmental Results Report for fiscal year 2019-2020. In this article, we review what the CRA has to say in the report about the results it is getting with the CVITP and its work on encouraging previous non-filers to file a return in order to access benefits to which they are entitled. We show that there is remarkably little information.
Although the CVITP was created in 1971, fifty years later it remains next to impossible to tell what the CVITP has achieved in relation to its objective of assisting individuals and families of low and modest incomes to submit their returns and thereby become eligible for a number of benefits and credits introduced by federal, provincial and territorial legislatures aimed at reducing poverty. The little information that is included suggests a massive failure this year; yet, there is no analysis showing the implications of this failure and how the CRA plans to avoid a similar result in the forthcoming tax season.
This is especially disappointing given that the federal government’s 2018 Poverty Reduction Strategy highlighted the role that the CVITP is supposed to be playing in contributing to reducing poverty across Canada. We conclude with an observation: if the rest of the information contained in the CRA’s report is anything like what the CRA has included for the CVITP and its non-filer initiative, then Canadians should be seriously concerned about the bases on which parliamentarians are making decisions allocating billions of dollars from the federal budget to finance the CRA’s annual operations.
For many CVITP host organizations, the demand for free clinic services exceeds the supply of volunteer time available to prepare returns. The income ceilings suggested by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) are an established way of limiting access to this free service. This article compares the income ceilings suggested by CVITP with the incomes that make up poverty lines and finds that, with a few exceptions, the former are generally greater than the latter. Host organizations which want to target their services to those who need it the most may wish to use income ceilings that are more closely aligned with the poverty lines for their region.
To learn more, you can read the full article here.
In a series of articles, we trace the evolution of the CVITP, using information from Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) reports and plans for Parliament. Our articles tell you about the clients served by the CVITP tax clinics, the returns that have been filed at the these clinics, the CVITP volunteers who have helped clients to file their returns and the organizations which have hosted CVITP tax clinics.
Learn why we reach the conclusion that “the CRA’s reporting on the CVITP has been weak to date and gives Parliament too little information.”
Interested? Start with the introduction to “The Evolution of the CVITP”.