Don't you just love the CRA?

The Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA). In the last couple of years, I was fortunate enough to have had limited dealings with them. However, everyone talks about CRA like they are a despisable leech. I had a Law Professor who would lecture and complain about CRA and the taxation system in Canada at least 10 minutes of every lecture. And mind you, every lecture was only 50 minutes 3 times a week. Yes, what were we doing paying him to complain about the tax system...that I have no idea. But some of his points are well taken, and there may be some justification for them. I will not talk about the tax system this time, but in the last two months, I have been dealing with the CRA a lot. It is a lot considering I have been here for four years with limited dealings with them. Then, young small poor me dealing with the CRA A LOT in the last two months.

Let's see. First, I was randomly picked out of 35 million people living in Canada for a tax review. Yes, me, a tax review for last year when I was still a student and earning close to a zero income. I had to submit a couple of documents and that was not all that bad.

With my Company, like I mentioned, I am somehow the "accountant" and have to deal with the government in two ways: Payroll taxes (Employment Insurance -- EI, Canada Pension Plan -- CPP, and employee income taxes) and with GST (Government Services Taxes). Somehow, I inherited some problems with the RP (payroll) with the CRA and had to call CRA to clarify them. Now, you would think that a government agency would have a phone line that works -- but many a times that I tried, it would just disconnect or indicated the line was busy!!! After trying a gazillion time on "redial" I was connected. Then, I realized that only the "Director"/Owner of the Company were allowed to access information as such, and had to get my boss to authorize me. So my boss called them a gazillion times before they picked up the phone. They gave us the wrong information, and we filled in a wrong form, which resulted me in calling in to CRA thinking that I was now authorized. Nope, wrong information. My boss called again, and this time the right procedure took place -- thankfully some officers were competent at their job. So, then I called CRA up to clear the problem, of which they promised to take care of it...and of which I am still waiting now after two months.

Then, last Friday my boss notified me that we were picked for a "review." Yes, small lil Company being reviewed (sounds familiar: poor lil me being reviewed too!) So I prepared all the documents, and spent half a day with quite a pleasant lady from CRA. She was very nice although very businesslike -- government servants are and have to act that way I suppose. In the end, she figured that we had a credit (we overpaid) our RP (payroll taxes) by a couple of hundreds...which of course is a good thing for us!

So, that was my experience with the CRA in the last two months. I am reminded of my Law Professor's broken record of complaints on the CRA. Really, does the agency have so many agents to go out and "randomly" review poor students and newly startup small businesses? If they do, I would prefer them to hire a couple more officers to pick up the phone to help me with my questions. And of course, it will be really nice if they could hire more agents to think of strategies to make tax loopholes no longer loopholes. I am not kidding, because in the very same Law Class, my Law Professor taught us legal means of not paying required taxes (he says not to call it tax evasion because they are legal means). While reviews are important, I think time should be spent chasing after the real crooks screwing government money.