January 16, 2023
Notes:
- All figures are taken from Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) sources. Because the CRA does not consistently report figures for the CVITP in one report, sources vary by year and by category.
- CRA generally uses May 16 to May 15 of the next year as its reporting period. (For example, for the 2022 tax season, the figures are taken from May 16, 2021, to May 15, 2022.)
- A tax year is the same as the next year’s tax season. (For example, returns for the 2021 tax year are prepared in the 2022 tax season.)
Host Organizations
*https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/news/2020/05/free-tax-clinics-go-virtual.html
**https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/news/2021/01/new-support-for-organizations-hosting-free-tax-clinics.html
***https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/news/2022/10/minister-of-national-revenue-announces-more-support-for-organizations-that-help-improve-access-to-benefits-and-credits.html
The number of host organizations peaked in the 2020 tax season. However, we believe this figure is misleading. It represents the number of host organizations that were registered to offer CVITP service at the outset of the 2020 tax season. As COVID health restrictions were introduced mid season, in-person clinics were shut down. We believe most host organizations shut their doors and only a small number chose to offer virtual clinics during the remainder of the 2020 tax season.
The precipitous decline in the number of host organizations for the 2021 tax season probably reflects the small number which remained open during the remainder of the 2020 tax season and which chose to repeat the experience in 2021. The number of host organizations offering CVITP service has largely rebounded in the 2022 tax season.
In the 2022 tax season, the number of host organizations represented 88.7% of the number registered for the 2020 tax season (peak year). While the number in 2022 exceeds the number in 2018, it is surpassed by the number registered in the 2019 season. Notably, the numbers for 2019 and 2020 were prior to the introduction of the CRA’s pilot grant program which is intended to increase the number of host organizations offering CVITP services. The incentives offered in the first two years (2021 and 2022) of this three-year pilot do not appear to have been sufficient to restore the number of host organizations which operated prior to the pandemic (a period when no financial incentives were being offered).
Volunteers
*https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/news/2020/05/free-tax-clinics-go-virtual.html
**https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/news/2021/01/new-support-for-organizations-hosting-free-tax-clinics.html
***https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/news/2021/04/statement-by-the-minister-of-national-revenue-the-honourable-diane-lebouthillier-for-national-volunteer-week.html
****https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/news/2022/10/minister-of-national-revenue-announces-more-support-for-organizations-that-help-improve-access-to-benefits-and-credits.html
The trend in volunteers has been in decline since it peaked in the 2019 tax season. The small rebound in the CRA count for the 2022 tax season is, we believe, misleading.
The CRA counts anyone who works on the CVITP as a volunteer. This includes the staff from host organizations who work on their CVITP clinics as part of their job. However, we use the term “volunteer” here to mean only those individuals who work on the CVITP for no remuneration. This latter group is smaller than the total number of volunteers reported on by the CRA, although by how much is unclear. What is clear is that the number of host organizations registered significantly affects this figure.
To partially offset the distorting effect of counting staff as volunteers, we assume that one person per host organization is staff and not a volunteer in the sense we mean. (We believe this is a conservative assumption. In some cases, it could be more than one.) This generates an adjusted estimate of volunteers that reveals a worrisome trend: the number of volunteers did not rebound partially in 2022 but continued to decline.
We believe the number of volunteers the CRA reported for the 2021 tax season is highly misleading and does not represent the number of volunteers who actually filed returns. We give our reasons in the last update for the evolution of the CVITP. This shows up starkly in the average of our adjusted volunteer estimate (AVE) per host organization. We do not believe that the number of volunteers in 2022 truly reversed a declining trend: this is quite apparent when the figures for average AVE per host organization are used. The average AVE per host organization is now 47% of what it was in 2015 (peak year).
To learn more about what our productivity measures show for the performance of volunteers and host organizations, see part 3 – CVITP Productivity.