Two years ago, we posted an article on the issue of non-filers.  We are now updating this with a series of three articles.

The first article in this series looks at the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) non-filer benefit letter campaign which has been running for six years.  This campaign entails the CRA sending letters to people who have not filed a return in the most recent tax season.  These letters outline the benefits of filing a return.  Then the CRA tracks whether or not the letter recipients file a return in the next tax season.

We argue that the performance of this campaign has been, at best, insufficient at dealing with the size of the non-filer problem.  Less charitably, we argue that it represents a minimalist effort on the part of the CRA.  Worse still, we believe the success of this effort, such as it is, is based on the faulty assumption that these letters actually motivate recipients.  Research commissioned by the CRA and others shows that a lack of knowledge about the benefits of filing is not identified as one of the main barriers to filing a return.  The CRA makes very little data available on this initiative but we strongly suspect that, even in the absence of this letter campaign, a similar number of non-filers from one tax season would likely file in the next.

This article lays the groundwork for a discussion in the next two articles of more effective approaches to addressing the issue.  As we hope will become readily apparent to the reader, the CVITP has an important, but as of yet vastly underexploited, role to play in helping to tackle this issue.