April 10, 2023
The CRA seems to have learned two lessons from the 2020-2021 COVID collapse.
On the positive side, the CRA has woken up to the reality that it can no longer simply freeride on the budgets and human resources of its community partners to deliver the CVITP service. At the very least, if it wants the CVITP to recover the ground lost during COVID, the CRA has to put forth some of its own money to support the costs incurred by its host organizations.
Early in 2021, it announced a pilot grant program with a budget of $10 million covering the 2021, 2022 and 2023 tax seasons. While this represents a significant shift from its previous “arms-length” attitude toward the CVITP, the program suffers from several serious shortcomings which are likely to undermine its intent. It is unlikely that the pilot program will succeed by itself in raising the CVITP numbers will to the levels last seen in the 2019 tax season just prior to COVID.
On the negative side, the CRA has dropped any further targets for the CVITP. This includes dropping the CVITP from its key performance indicators for the CRA’s tax program.
In the absence of any targets, what are the CRA’s aspirations for the CVITP?
Its plan for the fiscal year 2021-22 (i.e. covering primarily the 2022 tax season) states that “… the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program (CVITP) will keep helping eligible individuals complete their tax returns free of charge.”
The plan for the fiscal year 2022-23 (i.e. covering primarily the 2023 tax season) states that “[t]he CRA is enhancing the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program (CVITP) by recognizing the efforts of the community organizations and their volunteers through the introduction of the first CVITP grant program to help defray the costs of and further encourage the running of free tax clinics. In the first year alone, the CRA sent just under one million dollars to qualifying organizations across Canada to support their efforts to ensure that vulnerable people have the ability to file tax returns and access the benefits and credits designed to support them.”
The plan for the fiscal year 2023-24 (i.e. covering primarily the 2024 tax season) states that the CRA is committed to “increase the number of individuals helped through the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program.”
Further evidence of this scaling back of ambition is manifested in the number of references to the CVITP made in the plans the CRA submits to Parliament. In the post Budget 2018 period, when the CRA first established targets for the CVITP, there were 13 references to the CVITP in its departmental plan. The CRA’s most recent plan, just released in March 2023, includes one reference to the CVITP.
See the final article in this series: CONCLUSIONS