Category Archives: CVITP

A focus on recent developments in CVITP

Why Canada’s Poverty Rates Suddenly Look Worse

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Canada’s official poverty rates just shifted — not because incomes suddenly fell, but because Statistics Canada updated the way it measures poverty. The new 2023‑base Market Basket Measure now includes modern essentials like cellphone and internet services, raising the thresholds that define who is considered to be in poverty. As a result, poverty rates for 2020–2023 are slightly higher than previously reported, though the trend remains the same: poverty has been rising since 2020.

This change matters. Programs like the CVITP play a critical role in helping low‑income Canadians access benefits that count toward disposable income. For some households, CVITP support is the difference between being classified as poor or simply low‑income. Understanding how poverty is measured — and what’s left out — is key to making sense of Canada’s latest numbers.

Read this article to learn more about this change.

Council Has Too Much Faith in Automatic Filing, Undervalues CVITP

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The National Advisory Council on Poverty’s latest report highlights automatic tax filing as a solution for getting low-income Canadians their benefits.  But use of the services offered through the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) SimpleFile pilot project has been minimal.  Most people relied on traditional service providers, especially the CVITP, to file correctly.  The CRA’s evolving plans for automatic tax filing risk producing similar results.  Many will still turn to the CVITP which assists nearly a million people annually.  Even though the CVITP has serious resource limitations, the CRA is silent on providing further funding.

In all this, the Council has yet to acknowledge the long-standing CVITP, let alone its resource limitations.  This article explores what this omission means for the Council’s credibility and the CRA’s policy.

Will Automatic Tax Filing Live Up To Its Promise?

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Loyal readers know I have been tracking the federal government’s work on automatic tax filing for low-income Canadians ever since it was first announced in the 2020 Speech from the Throne.  After six years of delay, some social policy advocates predict that the announcement by the Prime Minister a few weeks ago will be a game-changer for delivering benefits and reducing poverty.

My own experience as a volunteer with the Canada Revenue Agency’s Community Volunteer Income Tax Program (CVITP), however, leaves me sceptical.  I believe the CRA’s current vision of automatic tax filing is unlikely to deliver the improvements promised – especially for those who have not been filing returns and missing out on benefits.  Here is why.

1The first article in this three-part series, “SimpleFile in 2024 and 2025”, examines the pilot the CRA launched in 2024 and continued to promote in 2025.  This was the CRA’s initial response in the government’s push for automatic tax filing.

As the evidence shows, SimpleFile has been an abysmal failure – despite the CRA’s claims to the contrary.  The evidence speaks for itself – read the article and judge for yourself using the CRA’s own numbers.

2The second article, “Further Experimentation in 2026”, reviews the CRA’s evolving plans, which use the SimpleFile invitation – if not its filing methods – as a pathway toward automatic tax filing.  It’s an interesting development, but one fraught with challenges that may limit adoption of this new form of automatic filing.

Moreover, individuals who have not filed a return in the last two or more years – and are therefore missing benefits – will be excluded.  The CRA is also unlikely to prepare pre-filled returns for past years, even when those years could mean substantial missed benefits.  Individuals will need outside help to prepare and file those returns.

3The third article, “Be Careful What You Wish For in 2027”, looks at the Prime Minister’s recent announcement of a large-scale rollout and considers what may unfold between 2027 and 2029.  The CRA plans to rely heavily on technology to deliver automatic tax filing.  This initiative will likely shift low-income Canadians who already file returns and get benefits from one filing method to another.  By preparing returns itself, the CRA could, in theory at least, bypass intermediaries such as the CVITP.

Yet many individuals already find CRA documentation and correspondence confusing. Many recipients of pre-filled returns will likely turn to trusted sources for help in understanding their pre-filled return and for advice before consenting to the CRA’s filing.

The CVITP is well positioned to provide this support free of charge.  With some 3,500 host organizations and 18,000 volunteers embedded in communities across Canada, it is a trusted network.  This article argues that by adapting the CVITP to help meet these challenges, the CRA could significantly boost adoption of automatic tax filing.

Across the three articles, I argue that by design, the CRA’s automatic tax filing initiative is unlikely to help low-income Canadians who have not been filing returns or receiving benefits.  Yet this was the originally rationale for introducing automatic tax filing.  Given its community roots and more than 50 years of earned trust, the CVITP remains the best option for fulfilling that promise.

CRA Lowballs Its Target For The CVITP In 2025

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In my latest review of the CVITP’s performance, I found that in the 2024 tax season, at best 27% of Canadians living in poverty in 2023 received free CVITP assistance. That leaves a staggering 73% without help.

Where did they turn? Some filed on their own, some paid for costly commercial services, and others likely didn’t file at all — cutting themselves off from the very benefits designed to reduce poverty. Barriers like lack of awareness, limited access to clinics, and overwhelming demand for the service all play a role.

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has long identified the CVITP as its contribution to Canada’s Poverty Reduction Strategy.  Yet since 2022, it has set no real performance targets for assisting more people.  Surprisingly, the CRA’s Departmental Plan for fiscal year 2025-2026 includes one: a promise to increase the number of people helped by 5%.

This article digs into why the CRA’s new target is less ambitious than it looks — and why Canadians concerned about poverty reduction shouldn’t be impressed.

Providing CVITP Service in 2024 to People in Poverty

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In the 2023 return filing season, the CVITP served only 25% of those living in poverty in 2022.  The poverty rate in Canada rose from 9.9% in 2022 to 10.2% in 2023.  What percentage of the 3,168,000 adults living in poverty in 2023 was served by the CVITP in the 2024 tax season?

Read this article to find out more.  Also learn why the Canada Revenue Agency should be doing a lot more to expand the CVITP yet seems instead to be focusing its efforts on two other largely ineffective programs.

The Evolution of the CVITP – 2024 Update

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What is happening to the CVITP over time?  The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has been publishing figures about the CVITP for some time.  But it only began offering a consistent view of what is happening across the country in 2022 when it started publishing figures from the previous year on the CVITP pages.  Even so, the CRA does not publish analyses of the data to show what has been happening over time.

I’ve been tracking the numbers since 2019.  Each year, I update the CRA’s figures to show how the CVITP is evolving.  With the recent release of the 2024 data, I have completed a review of the trends for the 2017-2024 period.  This information is now available as a series of four short articles with supporting data tables and charts plotting the data.  In these, I begin by looking at the results from delivering CVITP service.  I present and analyze the numbers for people assisted, returns filed and value generated for clients.  I then look at the infrastructure supporting CVITP service delivery.  I present and analyze the numbers for the recruitment of volunteers and host organizations.  Then I use two simple measures to examine volunteer and host organization productivity.  Finally, I extrapolate from these trends to what will likely happen in the 2025 season.  Read the summary of my findings as well as the full articles (with data and graphs).

Inequalities of Access to Free CVITP Services Across Canada – 2023 Update

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A recent article looked at disparities in access to free CVITP services between the provinces in the 2021 tax filing season.  This article updates the 2021 findings on inequalities of access to CVITP services across Canada for the 2023 tax filing season.  The results are disappointing but contain at least one surprise.  Read here to learn the results.

Why Ontario and BC Perform Poorly Compared to New Brunswick and PEI

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In a recent article on the CVITP participation rates of those living in poverty, we noted that “New Brunswick has the best participation rate, with 43.4% of the province’s poor receiving CVITP services.  At 17.4%, Ontario has the worst participation rate among the provinces, well below the rate for all the provinces combined (24.3%).”

The purpose of this article is to explore some of the reasons for these wide divergences.  To help find some of the reasons, we compare the two best performers, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island (PEI), with the two weakest performers, Ontario and British Columbia (BC).

First, we dismiss a couple of reasons we think are not relevant.  Next, we analyze the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) CVITP data for 2021 at the provincial level. Here we discover three important differences between these high and low performing provinces.  Then we look at the provincial level data in 2022 and 2023. We want to see if there have been changes since 2021 in these three areas which might significantly improve the CVITP participation rates of the poor performers relative to the strong performers.

Finally, we link these differences with the expected results of the CRA’s pilot grant program.  We argue that the developments in these areas prove the pilot did not achieve two and arguably three of its four expected results. (No CRA data has been made public which allows for an assessment of the fourth area.)

Read here about the three differences between the high and low performing provinces in 2021, how these differences evolved between 2021 and 2023, and why we believe they demonstrate that the CRA’s pilot grant program has been a disappointment.

CVITP Has Been Forgotten by National Advisory Council on Poverty

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Our work is based on the connection the federal government has drawn between poverty reduction and the CVITP in its 2018 Poverty Reduction Strategy.  Specifically, this strategy recognizes the important role the CVITP plays in providing access to the many federal (and provincial/territorial) benefits designed to reduce poverty.

Following the publication of the Strategy, the Poverty Reduction Act was adopted as law by Parliament in 2019.  Among other things, the Act requires the federal government to set up a National Advisory Council on Poverty.  To date, the Council has produced five annual reports (2020 – 2024).  Yet nowhere in these five reports is any mention made of the CVITP.  We find this surprising.

In its reports, the Council urges improved access to existing benefits.  Yet the Council never considers the role that the CVITP currently plays in facilitating access to those benefits, the challenges it faces in doing this and its weak performance in meeting these challenges.

Learn here why we think the Council should not remain silent on the only federal government initiative designed to help those living in poverty get the benefits to which they are entitled.  Read here what the Council should instead be doing.

Inequalities of Access to Free CVITP Services Across Canada

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There are great disparities in vulnerable Canadians’ access to CVITP services across Canada.  This shows up clearly in the different rates of participation in CVITP services between the provinces.

In this article, we look at the 2020 provincial poverty data Statistics Canada estimated using its Market Basket Measure or MBM.  (At that time, Statistics Canada had yet to establish a separate MBM for the territories.)  We compare this data with the CRA’s data on the number of CVITP clients served in each province during the 2021 tax filing season.  From this, we calculate the percentage of those living in poverty who were served by the CVITP.  (We use the generous assumption that all individuals served by the CVITP in 2021 were living in poverty in 2020.)  This gives us what we call CVITP participation rates by province.

These rates vary substantially between the provinces.  See here how your province ranks in comparison to the other provinces in providing CVITP services to those living in poverty.

What Should The CVITP Do About Any Problems With Ufile?

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Have you ever run into problems with the Ufile software which the CVITP Helpline is unable to resolve?  In this article, we illustrate this with an example of such a problem.  Then we discuss the current procedure our CVITP coordinator suggests we follow when these kinds of problems arise.  We explain why we think the suggested procedure is not appropriate.  And we offer an alternative way of addressing such problems which we believe is more likely to lead to their resolution.

The CVITP’s 2023 Coverage of the Impoverished in Canada

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In the 2022 tax season, the CVITP served only 28% of those living in poverty in 2021.  The poverty rate in Canada rose from 7.4% in 2021 to 9.9% in 2022.  What percentage of the 3,037,000 adults living in poverty in 2022 were served by the CVITP in the 2023 tax season?  Read this article to find out more.  Also learn about why we think the Canada Revenue Agency should be doing a lot more to expand the CVITP yet does not seem willing to do so.

The Evolution of the CVITP – 2023 Update

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Each year, we present and analyze the Canada Revenue Agency’s data to show how the CVITP is evolving.  Using the CRA’s 2023 data, we review the most recent trends in the numbers of people assisted and returns filed as well as in the value generated (results from CVITP service delivery), in the numbers of volunteers and host organizations recruited and retained (CVITP infrastructure supporting service delivery), and in measures of productivity for CVITP service delivery.  We also identify two positive and two negative factors which could affect CVITP productivity in the future.  Read the summary of our findings as well as the full articles (with data tables and graphs) on service delivery, infrastructure and productivity.

*Watch for a new feature that we will be publishing in the coming months on the Evolution of the CVITP!

Using Municipal Poverty Data to Better Target CVITP Service

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In a previous article, we argued that the CVITP is not serving enough of Canada’s poor.  In that article, we looked only at the national picture.  Under the most generous assumptions, we determined that the CVITP served at best only one in every five poor people in Canada.

In this article, we look briefly at 2020 provincial and territorial level data (the most recent year available) to establish CVITP coverage (again, using a very generous assumption).  Our estimates reconfirm that CVITP service to the poor remains surprisingly low across Canada (with the lower populated regions doing a comparatively better job).

Given the CVITP’s very limited delivery capacity, we believe that the best way to serve more of the poor is with better targeting.  But to do this effectively, host organizations need poverty data at the local level.  By this we mean both reaching out to specific groups to encourage them to use the service and greater selectivity in whom the service is provided to.

A new Statistics Canada website where poverty data for most Canadian municipalities can be found offers the CRA and host organizations the information needed to devise strategies to improve access to CVITP services for those who need it the most.  But we argue it is unclear whether either group has the will to make this happen.

How to Reduce the Number of Chronic Non-filers by Using the CVITP Better

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In the first article in this three-part series, we argued that while the number of current non-filers may not be as large as some popular estimates, the number is still very large and represents a serious drag on achieving the federal government’s poverty reduction objectives.   In the second article, we focused on recent non-filers, those who forget to file, file late, or skip one or two tax years.  Most importantly, these clients have a current mailing address on file with the CRA, enabling the CRA to communicate with them.  We looked at the non-filers benefits letter campaign and the forthcoming automatic filing pilot project to see how the CVITP could help to enhance the performance of these two initiatives.

In this third and final article, we look at the situation of chronic non-filers, those who have not filed for many years and make up the majority of estimated non-filers.  The CRA’s chief problem is that it does not have current mailing addresses for these clients.  Therefore, it has no way of communicating directly with them.  Yet this is the group the CRA should be trying to make progress in reaching if it is to substantially increase its coverage of poverty reducing benefits.

This article focuses on ways we think the CRA could also make use of the CVITP to target chronic non-filers.  To do so successfully, it will have to meet two pre-conditions.  First, it will have to become less reluctant to taking direct action in providing strategic direction and strong managerial support to the CVITP.  Second, it will have to change its vision for the CVITP from a free tax return preparation service to one that also includes helping low-income residents maintain their access to important poverty reducing benefits.

Assuming the CRA can meet these two conditions (and we acknowledge this is a big assumption), the article looks at ways it can better invest in its two partners to reach and effectively serve chronic non-filers.  With respect to community-based organizations that host CVITP clinics, we make suggestions to the CRA for changes to its funding formula, for providing data to improve client service and reporting on impact, and for assisting with coordination efforts.  We also have suggestions for the CRA regarding its other CVITP partner, volunteers; these cover their recruitment, training, supervision and support, and recognition and retention.

Finally, we close the article looking at how the CRA can better track its progress in contributing to the reduction of poverty through the CVITP by using more appropriate indicators than those it currently reports against.