This website is designed for people like you who are interested in the strong development of the CVITP as an important tool to help reduce poverty across Canada.  It provides critical analysis of the CVITP and its in reducing poverty.  As far as I can tell there are no other websites in Canada devoted to this purpose.

That said, I admit it’s a pretty niche subject.  There are few people who visit the site and fewer still who engage with its content.  This may be because it is difficult to find (internet search engines give it low priority), my writing style puts off some readers, or the content is not what most readers want to learn about.

Here, I want to address the last issue: its relevance to your interests.  I would like to hear from you about the issues you think I should be covering.  (At the bottom of this article, you will find a list of the main issues I try to cover.)

Perhaps I’ve missed an issue entirely that you think is relevant.  Then again, perhaps I have written on the issue before, but you think I’ve missed an important angle to it. Either way, please tell me what it is and why you think it is relevant.

Use the Comments section below if you want to share your ideas publicly on the website.  Use the Contact Us form if you want to share your ideas privately with me.

I will react to your suggestions, acknowledging each one and writing about those where I can find good information to share.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and to respond!

The main issues I cover on this website:

Regular features

• Evolution of the CVITP, based on the CRA’s release of its annual CVITP statistics (usually in the spring)
• Tax year information which may be useful to volunteers and host organizations (usually around the beginning of the tax season)
• Access to CVITP services at the national level by people living in poverty, based on Statistics Canada’s release of its Canadian Income Survey (usually in the spring)
• Inequalities of access to CVITP services at the provincial level, based on Statistics Canada’s release of disaggregated poverty data (usually in the spring)
• Review of the National Advisory Council on Poverty annual report (usually published in the fall) for relevance to the CVITP
• Review of federal budgets (previously tabled in Parliament in the spring but now in the fall) for relevance to the CVITP
• Review of CRA annual departmental plans (published in the spring) and departmental results reports (published in the fall) for relevance to the CVITP

Specific issues

• Automatic tax filing
• CRA grant funding to the CVITP
• CRA Ombudsman reports on the CVITP

Specific audiences

• Volunteers: Recent examples include how the CRA deals with money owed by clients, why getting informed client consent to file is so important, and what the CVITP should do about any problems with UFile.
• Host organizations: Recent examples include whether the CRA should change its income criteria for client eligibility, a detailed examination of the failure of the CRA’s five-year pilot grant project, and the limits to getting useful CRA data on an organization’s CVITP clinics.
• CRA: Recent examples include the looming volunteer shortage that could undermine the CVITP in the next 5 years, why I doubt the results from the CRA’s non-filer initiative, and ways to reduce the number of chronic non-filers by making better use of the CVITP.

Forthcoming articles

• Empowering clients with a better understanding of their income tax and benefit return
• How host organizations can collect and analyze their own data
• Why municipalities need to step up to support the CVITP
• The evolution of the CVITP in the provinces
• The past, present and future of the CVITP

Have you prepared a newcomer’s income tax and benefit return recently?  When filing the return, you may have told the client this action will automatically trigger the disbursement of benefits to which they are entitled.  But you may be surprised to learn that this is not always correct.

Often, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) will inform the client that they must first provide more information.  Find out here what this information is, why the CRA does a poor job of communicating this to the client and how it could do all this better in two simple steps.

A number of important new measures were introduced in 2020.  These included the CVITP Organization Identification Number and the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) grant program for host organizations participating in the CVITP, as well as five COVID-related benefit programs and a refundable tax credit for clients.  This article provides summaries of each of these with useful links where additional information can be found.  It also forewarns volunteers and their host organizations of problems that clients might raise stemming from the unusual measures taken in 2020.