November 13, 2025
Summary: The National Advisory Council on Poverty continues to promote automatic tax filing as a solution for low-income Canadians, even though it doesn’t exist yet. CRA’s SimpleFile services (2024-25) had very low uptake – fewer than 5% of invitees used them. By contrast, the CVITP helped more than ten times as many people file their returns. There is no evidence SimpleFile expanded access to benefits.
For the 2027-29 period, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) plans to send prefilled returns and file them automatically if recipients don’t respond. But these returns will omit provincial and territorial benefits that require extra information. Many low-income Canadians will still need traditional filing support, and automatic filing could leave some worse off.
Despite the CVITP’s role in helping hundreds of thousands of Canadians access benefits, the Council has never mentioned it in its annual reports. Instead, it vaguely refers to “community-based tax filing services” and notes their resource limitations without pressing the CRA to address them.
By ignoring the CVITP and uncritically promoting automatic tax filing, the Council undermines its credibility. Its recommendation rests on shaky grounds and fails to recognize the real support systems low-income Canadians rely on.
This website is premised on the connection the federal government has drawn between poverty reduction and the CVITP in its 2018 Poverty Reduction Strategy. 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 government to set up a National Advisory Council on Poverty. This Council functions with the assistance of Employment and Social Development Canada. Each year since 2020, the Council has produced an annual report for the government.
Last year, for the first time, I expressed my frustration with their reports in a post entitled “CVITP Has Been Forgotten By National Advisory Council on Poverty”. If you have not already done so, you may wish to read that post first.
On October 29, 2025, the National Advisory Council on Poverty (hereafter referred to as “Council”) released its annual report. Two themes stand out: its ongoing fascination with automatic tax filing as an effective way to get benefits, and its ignorance of the CVITP.
Believing the hype, not seeing the reality
As in last year’s report, the Council continues to recommend “expanding automatic tax filing and auto-enrollment initiatives for people experiencing poverty, to help ensure they receive all the federal benefits available to them.” But automatic filing doesn’t actually exist yet. At this stage there are two phases in the transition to automatic filing. The first phase, using something called SimpleFile services, has been a failure. And the second phase, yet to be implemented, shows signs of yielding far less than promised.
Phase 1: SimpleFile Services in 2024 and 2025
The results of the CRA’s SimpleFile services have been consistently disappointing:
- 2024: The CRA invited 2 million low-income individuals to use SimpleFile by Phone. While the governmen’t fall economic statement noted that 93% of invitees filed a return, it omitted a crucial fact: fewer than 3% used SimpleFile. Nearly all chose traditional methods.
- 2025: The CRA expanded the program, adding 100,000 invitations to use SimpleFile Digital. Uptake remained dismal – just over 4% by early November.
Meanwhile, the CVITP helped more than 850,000 people file their returns in 2024 and is on track to assist over 900,000 in 2025. That’s more than ten times the reach of SimpleFile.
SimpleFile invitations go primarily to people already up to date with their returns. There’s no evidence these users were previously missing out on benefits. In fact, many are likely former CVITP clients who simply switched filing methods.
I have documented the many reasons for the failure of SimpleFile services here and here.
Yet the Council seems to be unaware of any of this. Its 2025 report claims that “the July 2024 CRA expansion of SimpleFile services (phone, digital and paper) will improve access to benefits.” The data tells a different story: even if every SimpleFile user had previously been a non-filer, the impact would have been trivial compared to the CVITP.
Phase 2: 2027 to 2029
After the unimpressive results of the CRA’s first step toward automatic tax filing, one might expect the Council to adopt a more cautious tone. Instead, it remains enthusiastic.
In October 2025, the federal government announced that the CRA will introduce the second phase of its transition to automatic tax filing for low-income Canadians. The CRA’s likely plans for 2026 and the large-scale rollout of automatic tax filing in 2027 will continue to focus primarily on shifting low-income Canadians who currently file – and get their benefits – toward a single method.
The CRA’s approach has two steps:
- Send people a prefilled tax return and ask them to respond within 90 days.
- If no response comes, the CRA files the return on their behalf.
Given the experience with SimpleFile, I suspect most recipients will likely not understand their prefilled return.
Prefilled returns will rely only on the income slips the CRA already has. But many provincial and territorial benefits required extra information – things like rent, medical costs or other expenses. That data won’t appear on a prefilled return.
This means that many people will still turn to traditional filing methods to make sure they get all their benefits. And those who don’t respond risk having a return filed for them that leaves out important credits.
Phase one of automatic filing already showed the limits of a purely technological solution. Most people relied on traditional service providers, especially the CVITP, to file correctly. Phase two will likely be no different.
Despite these risks, the Council continues to recommend “expanding automatic tax filing and auto-enrollment for people experiencing poverty to help ensure they receive all the benefits available to them”.[i] Its report treats the next phase as if success were guaranteed. But the evidence suggests otherwise: without human support, automatic filing could leave some low-income Canadians worse off.
Does the Council even know about the CVITP?
At first glance, this may seem like a silly question. In the annex to the federal government’s 2018 Poverty Reduction Strategy, the CVITP is the fifth government initiative listed among well over 100 that support poverty reduction. It has been helping low-income Canadians to file their returns since 1971. In 2024, it assisted more than 850,000 people, and in 2025 it is on track to serve over 900,000. For many, CVITP clinics are the only wat to access the benefits they need. Given the Council’s origins, it should be very familiar with the CVITP’s unique role.
Despite this, the Council has never mentioned the CVITP in any of its reports. Sadly, this year’s report is no exception. The Council’s report states: “Although the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has introduced some community-based tax filing services, some people experiencing poverty indicated that they were denied access to these services. This may be due to limited resources within community organizations.”
That statement misses the bigger picture. For decades, the CRA has relied on community-based organizations to run the CVITP with little or no financial support. A small grant project piloted launched in 2021 and terminated in 2025 failed to meet its objectives for reasons largely within the CRA’s control. There is no sign of any further financial support in 2026. Yet the CRA will continue to depend on CVITP clinics to serve low-income Canadians for the foreseeable future.
The Council could have recommended that the CRA address the question of “limited resources within community organizations” to ensure that low-income residents are not denied access to CVITP tax clinics. Instead, the Council said nothing.
Conclusion
The Council recommends “increasing and diversifying access points for in-person services”. But by failing to acknowledge the CVITP’s unique role – and the government support it needs – the Council weakens its own credibility. Its silence raises doubts about the foundations of its recommendations, just as its uncritical promotion of automatic tax filing raises questions about its objectivity.
[i] See Recommendation 2: Access to and aware of benefits and supports in the 2025 report.