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.