Juno News - Trudeau POWER GRAB - CRA plans to automatically file your taxes!

00:00:00.000 well when your least favorite government agency the CRA obviously tell you that they want to

00:00:08.560 make your life easier and to save you more money by filing taxes on your behalf it's a pretty safe

00:00:15.920 bet to assume that they're not telling you the truth but that is exactly what is happening right

00:00:20.160 now the government is rolling out a pilot project for the CRA to start automatically filing taxes

00:00:28.000 on your behalf and very few people are talking about this except of course the canadian taxpayers

00:00:34.080 federation so joining us now on the faulkner show to break down this outrageous story is franco

00:00:40.000 terrazzano the national director of the canadian taxpayers federation franco thank you so much for

00:00:45.200 joining us hey harrison great to be here with you today so take us through this CRA power grab this

00:00:52.880 attempt by the CRA to file taxes on behalf of canadians why do they want to do that well look

00:00:58.000 it's it's all about a power grab it's all about a tax grab from canadians and so here's what's going

00:01:03.200 on folks the government has been quietly expanding the CRA's power to calculate and file your taxes

00:01:11.360 automatically okay so at the end of the day they want the CRA expanding the CRA's ability to offer

00:01:17.280 and expand automatic tax filing now that is bad for three main reasons number one the CRA wants to

00:01:25.200 squeeze every penny from you okay number two the CRA is already bad at its current job and number three

00:01:34.080 the CRA is already bloated and you can bet that if the government expands the CRA's power well then

00:01:40.800 they're also expanding the bureaucracy and costs of the CRA the government claims that they're doing

00:01:50.000 this because canadians are missing out on benefits that they could be receiving themselves somehow i

00:01:56.560 don't believe them when they say that franco should i believe the government when they say that they want

00:02:00.640 to give more money to canadians well like first of all let's let's look at this okay so number one um

00:02:07.840 there's already free programs available right so that you do have community volunteer tax clinics

00:02:13.280 that you can go to but if the government wants canadians to be able to keep more of their own

00:02:18.080 money stop taking so much money from us in the first place okay that is the easiest most efficient way

00:02:25.200 for the government to help canadians is just to stop taking so much money in the first place number two

00:02:30.640 simplify the tax code so that you don't need to hire an army of accountants to actually navigate

00:02:36.720 the tax system but it's exactly the opposite what would happen okay because think about the conflict

00:02:43.360 of interest of having the CRA as both the tax collector and the tax filer right so the CRA's job

00:02:51.920 is to squeeze every penny from you but during tax refund time you want to keep as much of your own money

00:02:59.280 as possible right and let's not forget that the government is broke the federal government

00:03:06.480 is more than a trillion dollars in debt so think about it this way right you want to keep as much

00:03:11.600 of your own money the CRA wants to take as much money from you the government is broke so at the end

00:03:17.440 of the day let's not forget two fundamental things your accountant works for you the broke government

00:03:24.800 bureaucrats at the CRA won't so if the government goes through fully with automatic tax filing you can

00:03:32.400 expect that the amount of taxes that you pay will go up so take us through how this works is this going

00:03:39.840 to be a pilot project and if it is what does the timeline look like before the CRA starts filing your taxes

00:03:46.880 and you aren't even aware that they're doing it well let me go back to my initial comments right the fact that the

00:03:52.400 government is quietly expanding the power of the CRA to move towards automatic tax filing so the

00:03:58.800 timeline back in 2020 the government announced that it would introduce free automatic tax filing for

00:04:04.800 simple files in 2023 budget 2023 the government launched um a pilot project and the government is

00:04:12.560 continuing to expand this so do we know exactly when this is going to happen fully for all canadians no

00:04:18.080 we don't and that's why the canadian taxpayers federation is blowing the whistle on this so we

00:04:23.360 can get ahead of it and so that average canadians can push back against the CRA's tax and power grab

00:04:30.240 what is the political response to this are politicians as joining your fight and speaking out against this

00:04:36.000 because just other than a few news articles and the and the content that you and your team are creating i

00:04:42.880 haven't seen much about this at all yeah it's it's really unfortunate that we haven't heard much

00:04:48.160 from actual elected officials because at the end of the day like this is going to mean canadians paying

00:04:53.680 higher taxes and let me give you a concrete example right let's take it away from the chalkboard and the

00:04:58.880 theory and let's go to a concrete example let's look at the british experience with this so in 2010

00:05:06.000 there were 6 million incorrect returns from the british tax agency 6 million and to a surprise of

00:05:14.480 nobody 75 of those incorrect returns were over billing taxpayers right so you might think that this would

00:05:25.520 save you the headache it won't save you the headache it'll just delay it because if you give the CRA

00:05:32.240 the ability to file everyone's taxes well they're inevitably going to make a mistake and you're

00:05:37.200 going to have to like hire accountants to double check the CRA's homework so that the CRA is not

00:05:42.800 over billing you and folks let's not forget that the CRA is already very bad at its job right so when the

00:05:50.800 CRA inevitably messes up your tax refund good luck getting the CRA on the phone right the taxpayer ombudsman

00:05:57.840 person said that they were flooded with complaints about the CRA as complaints about the CRA increased

00:06:03.840 by 45 percent from pre-pandemic levels and then let's talk about the pandemic for a second when the CRA

00:06:12.000 gave covid benefits to hundreds of dead people or people in jail or people not living in the country

00:06:20.720 or to children right so the CRA is already bad at its current job there is no way we should be gave

00:06:27.040 giving the CRA more power and there's definitely no way that we should be giving the CRA more power

00:06:32.800 over our wallets well there's approximately 60 000 CRA personnel if the if the numbers are correct

00:06:40.720 and as you have uh very clearly laid out for us they can't seem to do their jobs properly i would imagine

00:06:47.360 that expanding their own powers to start filing taxes would require more CRA personnel what are we

00:06:53.760 looking at here how how big could the CRA end up getting if this is going to be their new mandate

00:06:59.120 well the CRA is already bloated and expanding the CRA's power means more CRA bureaucrats which means more tax

00:07:07.920 hikes for Canadians to pay for the expanded bureaucracy that is already bloated as you mentioned and this

00:07:14.000 number is correct according to the government's own numbers there's about 60 000 federal bureaucrats in

00:07:20.240 the CRA well for comparison the US's IRS has about 80 000 bureaucrats okay so in Canada there's one tax

00:07:31.920 bureaucrat for every 700 people in the US there's one tax bureaucrat for every 4 000 people so the CRA is

00:07:40.720 already bloated the CRA is already costing Canadians too much money but folks think about how expanding

00:07:47.440 the series power will directly impact you let me give you another concrete example last year the CRA

00:07:54.560 bureaucrats went on strike right during tax season okay well if you expand the CRA's power over your tax

00:08:02.720 returns do you think the CRA striking during tax season is going to increase in likelihood i bet you it will

00:08:11.120 and i bet you it'll give their union bosses more leverage the next time they want to take more of your

00:08:17.200 money during negotiation times how have we ended up in a situation where the public sector bureaucrats are

00:08:26.720 fighting and and and and basically claiming that working in the office three days a week is extremely

00:08:33.360 anti-worker it seems like it'll never it seems like this situation will never resolve itself from the pandemic

00:08:40.720 well look i i do like to be optimistic i do think that they're uh that that our Canada's bureaucracy

00:08:48.240 isn't too far gone just yet but like let's not kid ourselves there is a lot of work to be done for this

00:08:54.880 government or a future government if they really care about reining in the massive size and cost of

00:09:00.320 government right because since Trudeau became prime minister he has added a hundred and eight thousand

00:09:07.440 federal bureaucrats Harrison that's an increase in the federal bureaucracy of 42 percent in less than a

00:09:15.920 decade more than a hundred thousand bureaucrats so look like you know we've heard mr polyev who all the

00:09:23.520 polls show that he is poised to form the next government he has said that he wants to fix the budget and cut

00:09:28.880 taxes those are great policy um promises but for polyev to be able to deliver and fix the budget and cut

00:09:38.720 taxes his ability to deliver on that promise will be directly tied to his ability to shrink the

00:09:44.960 bureaucracy in Ottawa and it's not just in Ottawa right because i came across a statistic that said close

00:09:50.960 to a quarter of all working Canadians work in the public sector whether they work in municipal level or

00:09:57.200 provincial politics um or the federal government that seems outrageous to me it seems far beyond uh

00:10:04.400 the the the typical uh stat across the world is that what you guys are seeing as well as is Canada

00:10:09.760 an outlier here in the size of our bureaucracy you know i just don't have the data for the rest of the

00:10:14.720 world but what i do know is that we are living through a tale of two canadas where workers in the

00:10:21.600 private sector take it on the chin with higher taxes government regulations we had what how many years

00:10:29.520 of on again off again revolving lockdowns massive inflation largely caused by government tax hikes

00:10:36.640 and money printing and then the other side of the the equation is you have government bureaucrats

00:10:43.760 financially shielded from the pain that people are suffering in the in the private sector right we

00:10:49.200 mentioned the 100 000 additional bureaucrats that trudeau has hired in less than a decade

00:10:54.160 what about the 1 million pay raises trudeau has rubber stamped over the last four years

00:10:59.360 or the more than 1 billion dollars in bonuses the government has rubber stamped since trudeau has been

00:11:05.600 in office all while bureaucratic departments can barely meet half of their own performance targets

00:11:11.120 so what i do know is that we're experiencing a tale of two canadas the makers versus the takers the

00:11:18.320 people who work outside of government for a business in the private sector versus the people

00:11:23.120 who are shielded behind the golden gates of government and funded by the taxpayer one of the most obvious

00:11:31.760 examples of this government waste and this expansion of the public sector i think for many canadians

00:11:37.200 is the size of the cbc for example the amount of money that goes to the cbc and how that has become such

00:11:43.600 a political uh such a major political issue for the conservatives and then for uh the left-wing

00:11:49.680 parties to attack conservatives over from what you guys are seeing uh with your work how has this issue

00:11:56.880 changed the political landscape in canada well i just think more and more people are fed up with how

00:12:03.440 much the cbc is costing us and how they're wasting our tax dollars and let me just give you two examples

00:12:08.240 right the cbc rubber stamping another round of bonuses for 1200 non-union staff and managers

00:12:15.440 and executives right like the cbc has rubber stamped more than 130 million dollars in taxpayer funded

00:12:22.000 bonuses since 2015. a complete waste of money like why are they giving themselves bonuses with our tax

00:12:28.240 dollars number two what about this so-called cbc modernization panel that is costing taxpayers more

00:12:36.080 than 200 000 and that the cbc stacked with ex-cbc employees right like the cbc doesn't need to uh

00:12:45.120 waste a bunch of taxpayers money trying to figure out why the cbc is failing all they have to do is go

00:12:50.720 to any random tim hortons across the country and ask any random person there why the cbc is failing

00:12:56.640 and let me tell you this the only modernization plan that the cbc needs is three words long defund the cbc

00:13:04.720 with that that's a perfect way to finish this interview frango thank you so much for joining

00:13:10.320 us where can canadians find uh the work that the canadian taxpayers federation is doing well please

00:13:16.160 head over to taxpayer.com and i will say a little plug if you are worried about the cra's tax and power

00:13:24.240 grab then hit up our petitions tab taxpayer.com and sign the petition no automatic tax filing

00:13:30.640 franco terrizano thank you very much hey thank you

Juno News - October 24, 2024

Trudeau POWER GRAB - CRA plans to automatically file your taxes!

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