July 14, 2021
As mentioned in a previous article, one priority in her Supplementary Mandate Letter from the Prime Minister (dated January 2021) instructs the Minister of National Revenue to “enhance and expand the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program”. One thing the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) can do to help achieve this is through placing greater emphasis on another priority mentioned in the same letter, instructing Minister Lebouthillier to “improve the collection and analysis of disaggregated data related to supports and services offered by the CRA.”
Data needs to be collected and analyzed for at least two reasons. First, to confirm whether or not the CVITP is meeting its intended objective. This is the subject of a companion article, entitled “First, the CRA Needs to Collect and Analyze the CORRECT Data”.
Second, where the CVITP is falling short of its intended objective, to help devise strategies to ensure the program can better meet its intended objective. This is the subject of this second article.
Increasing the Number of Clients as a Strategic Priority
We have argued in a previous article that the CRA collects and analyzes the wrong data on CVITP results.
Let us assume it starts collecting and analysing the right data. Where the analysis shows the CVITP is falling short of its intended objectives, the CRA needs to devise a strategy to ensure the program will be better designed to meet these objectives.
Presently the CRA combines its analysis of data on CVITP results with its analysis of data on the CVITP delivery infrastructure to help inform its choice of actions for enhancing and expanding the CVITP.
As the CRA seeks to enhance and expand the CVITP, it can pursue at least two strategic priorities. It can improve the service offered to clients. It can also increase the number of clients to whom the service is offered. The rest of this article explores actions focused primarily on meeting the latter priority. (Some of these actions could also lead to improvements in service quality. But this is not their main focus. A future article will look at actions focused primarily on improving the quality of service which could also form part of the CRA’s strategy.)
Use What You’ve Already Got Better
There are two basic options for a strategic priority aimed at increasing the number of CVITP clients. The CRA could look to increasing the number of host organizations and volunteers offering CVITP services. It could also look at ways to increase the efficiency of the CVITP services offered by existing host organizations and their volunteers. These two options are not mutually exclusive. It is a matter of emphasis.
1We believe placing a heavier emphasis on the first option would be misguided. This is because it depends entirely on the goodwill of new organizations and volunteers, something over which the CRA has no control. (In 2020, the number of volunteers dropped marginally and in 2021, it dropped significantly from its 2019 peak. This suggests a possible shrinkage in the program in the immediate.) Getting new host organizations and volunteers to offer CVITP services at the same time as the CRA encourages existing host organizations and their volunteers to ramp up their current offerings will be a tall order.
2We believe the second option, increasing efficiencies within the existing delivery infrastructure, holds more promise, especially in the immediate future. This is because the CRA has many low or no cost tools at hand that it could use to promote such an approach. (We will offer examples of these tools in series of forthcoming articles on the theme of CVITP partnerships.)
Yet there are signs that the CRA’s current approach to reaching more clients is to place greater emphasis on increasing the size of the CVITP delivery infrastructure, seeking out more host organizations and more volunteers.
For example, the Appendix of the CRA Ombudsman’s 2020 Report on the CVITP, entitled “Reaching Out”, includes the following comment made by the CRA in February 2019 in response to the Ombudsman’s November 2018 Observation Paper:
“The CVITP’s strategic priorities support the central goal of increasing the number of people helped annually by the program: to grow and maintain services, the CVITP must continue to recruit new organizations and volunteers and retain pre-existing ones.”
Again, in January 2021, the CRA announced a three-year pilot grant program in support of host organizations. Its news release stated that:
“The CRA expects that the grant program will make the work for these free tax clinics a little easier and encourage more organizations to sign up. This will let them help more taxpayers to file their tax returns.”
Data Analysis That Informs Strategic Choices
To reach more clients, then, we believe the CRA needs to place more emphasis on getting greater efficiencies from the CVITP’s existing delivery infrastructure. To do this, the CRA must combine its analysis of data on the CVITP’s delivery infrastructure with analysis of CVITP results. Here we offer just a few examples to illustrate how this could be done.
For example, analysis of CVITP results in a region could be combined with that of host organizations in the region. Thus, a region may show a larger than desired percentage of non-filers who fall below the official poverty line. Analysis of data on host organizations in the region can then be used by the CRA to target its interventions. The CRA might identify host organizations which operate year-round and have a track record of assisting previous non-filers below the poverty line to file. These host organizations might be offered additional financial support to help ramp up campaigns in support of getting previous non-filers to file.
Here’s another example. Data from a region may show that on the one hand, the percentage of CVITP clients who fall below the poverty line is small but, on the other hand, the percentage of people falling below the poverty line but who are not served by the CVITP is large. This suggests insufficient targeting of CVITP services to those who need it the most. In turn, two approaches might be possible. One might be to encourage host organizations within the region which serve an especially large percentage of clients above the poverty line to reduce the income ceilings they use to establish CVITP client eligibility. Restricting client demand might free up access to those in greater need. Another approach might be to offer additional financial support to host organizations which serve an especially large percentage of clients below the poverty line to increase their capacity to offer CVITP services.
Then again, analysis of data on host organizations could also be combined with that of their volunteers which could be used to identify ways to address current capacity constraints. For example, host organizations which have a significant number of paid staff working as CVITP “volunteers” may have fewer constraints to expansion than host organizations with a very small number of paid staff who work as CVITP “volunteers”. Again, host organizations with a sizeable number of volunteers who have substantial CVITP experience may be better placed to take on new volunteers than host organizations with few experienced volunteers. Then again, experienced volunteers affiliated with host organizations which do not serve many clients may also be encouraged to affiliate themselves with other host organizations in the region which are in greater need of volunteers.
Conclusion
This article began by assuming the CRA collects the right data to inform its strategic priorities. However, the CRA presently collects and analyses the wrong data on CVITP results. It combines this with its analysis of data on the CVITP delivery infrastructure to produce a strategy for enhancing and expanding the CVITP. One of the CRA’s strategic priorities appears to be to serve more clients. To do this, we believe it emphasizes enlarging the CVITP delivery infrastructure. Yet the CRA remains silent as to how well the CVITP is doing in targeting the clients the program was set up to serve.
What is key is that the CRA must start by collecting and analyzing data on clients which align with the purpose of the CVITP. We believe the CRA’s strategy for the CVITP will be misguided as long as it continues to be based on the wrong results data.
Even if the CRA starts using results data more closely aligned with the CVITP intended objectives in its analyses, it will need to place greater emphasis on making better use of the CVITP delivery infrastructure currently available. This would be a more reliable, cost-effective approach to serving more clients than betting on new numbers of community-based organizations and volunteers coming forward, offering up their own time and money to deliver an essential federal government program.