April 10, 2023
As with many other programs and services, the public health restrictions introduced during the COVID pandemic had a dramatic effect on the delivery of CVITP services. The lockdown came toward the end of March 2020, less than halfway through the peak period of the 2020 tax season. This shut down all CVITP clinics across the country as they were being run almost exclusively through in-person interviews. It took the CRA about 6-8 weeks to draw up modified procedures that would allow its host organizations to offer CVITP services while respecting the public health restrictions. Only a small number of CVITP host organizations chose to reopen and operate under this model; the majority decided to suspend their CVITP services for the rest of the 2020 tax season.
This led to a dramatic fall in the number of individuals assisted in the 2020 tax season. Much later, the CRA reported that 407,408 individuals had been assisted during the 2020 tax season, representing around 51% of its 802,000 target for that season.[1]
For the 2021 tax season, the CRA planned to continue operating the CVITP with modified procedures for its host organizations. For many reasons, few host organizations chose to offer CVITP services during this season. This meant only marginally increased service over the 2020 tax season. Eventually, the CRA reported that 582,420 individuals had been assisted during the 2021 tax season, representing about 67% of its 873,000 target for that season.[2]
What of the counterfactual? In the absence of COVID, what might have happened to CVITP service delivery? Would the numbers of CVITP host organizations and volunteers continued to grow? And with this, would the numbers of individuals assisted and returns completed kept growing, much as had happened in the past? Clearly this was the assumption built into the CRA’s targets for the CVITP in the 2020 and 2021 tax seasons.
But there are reasons to suspect this would probably not have happened. More likely, the CVITP’s results would have started to plateau. We find early evidence for this in the CVITP productivity figures we calculated. After peaking in the 2017 tax season, these show declines in CVITP volunteer and host organization productivity in the 2018 tax season, followed by further declines in the 2019 tax season.
See the next article in the series: 2022-2024 FINANCIAL STIMULUS BUT NO TARGETS
[1] In the fall of 2020, the CRA’s Departmental Results Report (DRR) for fiscal year 2019-20 was published, some 18 months after the DP for the fiscal year 2019-20 had been published. It reported that 407,408 individuals had been assisted during the 2020 tax season, representing 50.8% of its 802,000 target for that season.
[2] In the fall of 2021, the CRA’s DRR for fiscal year 2020-21 was published, some 18 months after the DP for 2020-21 had been published. It reported that 582,420 individuals had been assisted during the 2021 tax season, representing 66.7% of its 873,000 target for that season.