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Results: 76 - 90 of 1234
View Jean Yip Profile
Lib. (ON)
Looking at the 273 full-time employees working on the delinquent filer compliance, I see that there was a return on investment of more than 100:1. That was fantastic.
What has happened to those 273 full-time employees? Is this program still being maintained? Will this group continue to work on compliance once the wage subsidy programs are over?
Bob Hamilton
View Bob Hamilton Profile
Bob Hamilton
2021-06-08 12:10
Yes, and I'll leave a bit of space if Mr. Gallivan wants to add.
That program is an ongoing program that looks at delinquent filers to understand why they didn't file and tries to work with them to get them to file. It has had a fairly sizable return, so we have no thought of discontinuing that program. It will continue beyond the pandemic.
In fact, part of our response to the Auditor General's report is to look at that program to see if we're doing it as efficiently as possible and if there is room within our risk assessment to do it in a better way. Sometimes you can get high returns initially when you start something like that, but of course those returns diminish as you take care of some of the easy cases and move on to the more difficult ones.
However, we are in the process of making sure that the program is as effective as it can be going forward.
View Jean Yip Profile
Lib. (ON)
There was an action plan that was completed on April 1 of this year to apply business intelligence for phase 2 post-payment audits. Could you elaborate on what plans were completed?
Ted Gallivan
View Ted Gallivan Profile
Ted Gallivan
2021-06-08 12:12
We basically learned about likely mistakes or discrepancies from our initial audits and fed that into our file selection algorithms. Once we sampled a few people who made a mistake, we were looking for everybody else who might have made the same mistake.
View Philip Lawrence Profile
CPC (ON)
Thank you very much.
Mr. Hamilton, I want to actually give you a compliment.
The person-first strategy is fantastic. I hope you take that seriously, because there are many people struggling out there. There are very few Canadians who don't want to pay their taxes, but there are perhaps many Canadians who can't pay their taxes, so I do appreciate that comment.
My first question is for the Deputy Auditor General, Mr. Hayes.
Regarding all the documents the AG reviewed, other than the package that Mr. Sabia says we're still waiting on, and that you saw, have we received them? Have you reviewed the two packages?
If you have any comments, that would be great.
Andrew Hayes
View Andrew Hayes Profile
Andrew Hayes
2021-06-08 12:13
We did do a comparison of the information we have in our audit files and the materials that have been provided. As Mr. Sabia noted, [Technical difficulty—Editor] that we did not see in the finance area that I suspect will probably be coming later this week. It's difficult for us on the finance side to be 100% certain, given the redactions and the information that wasn't disclosed. However, we are confident that we received all the information we asked for during the audit.
We also received on the CRA side the information we needed for our audit. There was a large volume of information provided, but we had other information in our files in addition to that, because of the interviews we had with witnesses and that sort of thing.
Andrew Hayes
View Andrew Hayes Profile
Andrew Hayes
2021-06-08 12:14
I would say that once you see the remaining information come from the Department of Finance, you likely will have at least a good package compared to what we have.
View Philip Lawrence Profile
CPC (ON)
On the interviews, Mr. Hayes, is that information you normally provide our committee with, or is that something just for the AG's use, and you compile it and put findings in your report?
Andrew Hayes
View Andrew Hayes Profile
Andrew Hayes
2021-06-08 12:15
These would be interviews conducted during our audits that form part of our working papers. In those cases, we interview officials in the departments about the information that we've received. We get further detailed explanations through the interviews. Those interview notes reside in our files.
View Philip Lawrence Profile
CPC (ON)
You're confident that there's nothing in those notes that we haven't seen that we need to see.
Andrew Hayes
View Andrew Hayes Profile
Andrew Hayes
2021-06-08 12:15
I will turn to Mr. Le Goff to provide confirmation there, but from the discussion we had before this hearing, as an audit team we were confident that we'd received the information and that you have received information that is consistent with what we have received.
View Philip Lawrence Profile
CPC (ON)
No, that's fine, Mr. Hayes. That's great. I appreciate it. Thank you for your responses.
Mr. Hamilton, I'll go back to you, if I could. I'm on page 279. I could be at this committee for hours and hours, and I'm only on three pages here, but I suspect, Mr. Hamilton, you wouldn't enjoy it as much.
I see here on the top of page 279, and I'll quote, “Nudge CERB recipient taxpayers by informing them how much tax they could be owed on their benefits.”
I have two questions with that. One thing that I observed early on and throughout is that the taxability of the CERB benefit was not very well published. In fact, initially the government said it wasn't. Then it was. To this day, I don't think the government does a great job of communicating what source withholdings are in general and with respect to the CERB.
Can you tell me about the communications programs you did to tell people what they would owe on their taxes?
Bob Hamilton
View Bob Hamilton Profile
Bob Hamilton
2021-06-08 12:16
Certainly, and I might just add in Max to put some fine details on the communications plan. That issue is important to us: Whatever the benefit is, is it going to be taxed, or not? We face that question on an ongoing basis. It was important in this context.
We actually feel that it was clear for us once the program started. There may or may not have been debates before, but it was going to be taxable. We did try to communicate that to make it clear, because we knew that if people didn't think it was taxable and then it became taxable, i t would lead to issues in the next filing season, so we did try to communicate that well so that people understood it.
Maybe I'll open the door briefly for Max to talk about any of the key elements that he'd like to flag on how we did that.
Maxime Guénette
View Maxime Guénette Profile
Maxime Guénette
2021-06-08 12:17
Thank you.
Very quickly, we emphasized communications to the media on our website, made sure the call centre agents had clear information when dealing with taxpayers online and made social media posts as well. I think those are the measures I would highlight.
View Philip Lawrence Profile
CPC (ON)
Are you concerned at all with this pandemic? Not only has it been a good part of 2020, but it will be a good part of 2021 before our economy fully recovers. Of course, the government announced they wouldn't charge any interest or penalties on folks who had income from the benefits in the pandemic. To me, there's going to be a lot of tax coming owing from people who may still be in difficult economic circumstances. Are you concerned at all about the collection that may need to be done and the burden that will be placed on Canadians as they come out of the pandemic?
Results: 76 - 90 of 1234 | Page: 6 of 83

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