September 5, 2024
In this third article in a four-part series entitled The Evolution of the CVITP – 2023 Update, we combine data from Part 1 (Results from Delivering CVITP Service to Clients) and Part 2 (Infrastructure Supporting CVITP Service Delivery) to generate figures that offer a picture of some basic productivity trends within the CVITP.
Volunteers
For the two measures of volunteer productivity, we make use of our adjusted volunteer estimate. (This tries to correct for the number of staff employed by host organizations which the CRA counts as volunteers.) It should be recalled that there are also people registered as volunteers who greet clients or do other administrative tasks but who do not file returns. We do not make any adjustment for these latter volunteers. We also do not make any adjustment for newly registered volunteers who end up, for various reasons, not volunteering during their first tax season. Thus, our numbers may understate the average number of individuals assisted and returns filed per volunteer tax preparer.
What do the numbers for the two productivity measures show? In both cases, the numbers initially peak in 2017 followed by declines over the next three years. (This corresponds with a period in which the numbers of volunteers rose modestly.)
This declining trend is reversed in 2021 with a rebound close to the initial 2017 peak. (This corresponds with a period in which the volunteer numbers fell.)
The two productivity measures for volunteers reached new peaks in the 2023 tax season even though the number of volunteers bottomed out in 2022 and only started to rise again in 2023.
In other words, each CVITP volunteer tax preparer is on average doing more work than ever before, assisting more individuals and filing more returns.
Host organizations
What do the numbers for the two productivity measures show? In both cases, the numbers initially peaked in 2017, after which they declined, bottoming out in 2020.
Since 2020, the numbers have consistently risen but have yet to reach the peaks achieved in 2017. In the coming years, existing host organizations will increasingly find it difficult to improve their productivity figures as they run up against their own internal capacity limitations.
To read about the two positive and two negative factors we identify which could affect CVITP productivity in the future, see Part Four – Looking Ahead.