Western Standard - November 03, 2025


Tax Filing “Consultation” Exposed： CRA Accuracy Crisis & Ottawa’s Power Grab

Topics
tax filing consultations
Mentioned
Franco Taranzano Harry Potter Carney
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Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

175.31

Word count

1,918

Sentence count

137


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Franco Taranzano is the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayer Federation and has been covering the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) for a while now. In this episode, he talks about the new automatic tax filing system that the government announced on October 10th, and why he thinks it's a bad idea.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello, everyone. My name is Leah Maschet. I'm a reporter here at the Western Standard. And
00:00:11.640 today our guest is Franco Taranzano. He's the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayer
00:00:16.720 Federation. And recently he's covered a lot on the CRA. And basically, I want to talk about it
00:00:24.120 since there's been, for example, like the 17% accuracy thing when they take calls, which is
00:00:30.180 wild. Yeah, so I wanted to ask him some questions about that since he seems to know a lot. Yeah,
00:00:36.320 so Franco, thank you again for joining us today. Hey, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
00:00:41.720 No problem. Okay, so first things first, I kind of also wanted to talk about the tax filing
00:00:47.060 consultations that Carney announced earlier this month on the 10th. Yeah, so basically,
00:00:54.120 they did a bunch of, what was it called consultations? It's like surveys and stuff
00:00:59.640 for like a month, September to October. And then the next day, they announced that they were going
00:01:05.940 to do it and introduce in 2026. So why don't you tell us more about that? And like, do you really
00:01:11.540 think that Canadians like fell for this? Like, this seems like, you know, they didn't even really
00:01:15.080 listen. Well, the consultation was a sham, right? Like, let's be so for real here. What Canadians had
00:01:21.800 until I believe it was Thursday, October 9, to give their input into the government on automatic
00:01:26.920 tax filing. And then the very next day, October 10, Carney makes this announcement. Like, there is
00:01:33.240 no way that government bureaucrats pulled an all nighter going through 1000s of email and survey
00:01:40.240 submission responses from Canadians before sending Carney out hours later to make that announcement.
00:01:45.680 I mean, look, it's a really bad look for Carney to ask Canadians about their opinion, and then
00:01:52.140 ignore Canadians opinions, right? It makes you just look like government consultations are
00:01:56.900 a sham. And that's a real shame.
00:01:59.640 Mm hmm. Yeah, but it's Yeah, it's really wild. Like, I just, I don't know, like, but how can
00:02:07.120 they genuinely my question? Like, I just don't get how can they think that they would fall for
00:02:11.680 this? Like, what do you think they were thinking when they did this? Well, they probably just hope
00:02:16.060 that Canadians would notice, right? They probably they probably just hope that it was only a small
00:02:20.040 portion of Canadians that would notice. And that's why the Canadian Taxpayers Federation called
00:02:24.080 Carney out on that, because it just makes it look like it's a complete sham of a consultation.
00:02:29.260 But you know, let's get into the actual heart of the issue, because automatic tax filing is such
00:02:34.700 a bad idea, right? And the number one reason that automatic tax filing is bad is because it's a
00:02:40.260 conflict of interest, right? Having the CRA as both the tax collector and the tax filer is a
00:02:47.420 serious conflict of interest, right? You, as a taxpayer, you want to keep as much of your own
00:02:52.480 money as you can. The government wants to take as much money from you as it can, right? Well,
00:02:58.340 who's going to win that power struggle if the government gives the CRA the role as both tax
00:03:04.080 collector and tax filer, right? Expect your tax bill to go up. You know, I always use this analogy,
00:03:09.280 but trusting the tax man to do your tax return is like trusting your dog to protect your burger,
00:03:16.060 right? That burger is gone. And so is your wallet.
00:03:19.880 And like on the justification they put on their government website, it was about how low income
00:03:26.080 people are the ones that are going to benefit the most from this. But it seems like wouldn't they be
00:03:32.060 the ones that benefit the least from this? Because also on top of that, it's basically like they're
00:03:38.680 being the person's accountant, right? Basically.
00:03:42.340 Well, like what's that old saying? The road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? Like here's,
00:03:49.200 here's the heart of the matter is that like there are already solutions out there that are free,
00:03:55.340 that are voluntary, that are private, and don't include expanding the power of the CRA over
00:04:01.840 taxpayers, right? Like, I mean, just go on Google and you'll find numerous searches of businesses
00:04:08.040 offering free software to Canadians with modest income and simple tax solutions. But you don't
00:04:13.600 even have to rely on the business community, right? There are free and voluntary community tax
00:04:19.020 clinics for people with modest incomes and simple solutions to get their tax return done
00:04:23.780 for free. And like also to like if we're talking about the people who are struggling the most,
00:04:28.560 right, think of potentially a homeless person living on East Hastings, well, automatic tax filing
00:04:33.780 isn't the solution to help those people, right? Like we're talking about, in many cases, the government
00:04:38.500 doesn't know who they are, doesn't have their full information. And in many cases, those people who are
00:04:44.100 really struggling, they don't have access to bank accounts, many don't have access to phones or even
00:04:49.780 computers. So automatic tax filing is not a solution to help those people. And, you know, for people who
00:04:55.980 are modest income, and people with simple tax solutions, the solutions are already there, and
00:05:01.060 they're already there for free outside of government, right? So essentially, what the government would be
00:05:05.340 doing here is forcing taxpayers to pay for more bureaucrats in Ottawa to deliver a service that is already
00:05:12.880 being done free outside of government. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Well, okay. So you kind of like, basically hinted at
00:05:23.180 like what this would end up doing. Especially since the fact that what was it? I remember you wrote in
00:05:29.740 one of your other articles that like, they answered like 36% of their calls in was it like, I forget what
00:05:37.060 year it was, but maybe you can help me out with that. I think that was the previous Auditor General
00:05:42.340 report and there and so the Auditor General Okay, so this is crazy. The Auditor General wrote this
00:05:48.280 scathing report back in 2017, where like the CRA barely picks up the phone. And when they do, they
00:05:53.300 get a whole bunch of questions wrong. Well, the Auditor General just updated the report, right just came
00:05:58.340 out. And like the craziest point of this whole report is that as a Canadian, when you call the CRA,
00:06:04.060 and you're asking the CRA a question about your own personal taxes, the CRA is only giving out the
00:06:09.420 right answer 17% of the time. Like, like, it's almost so laughable, like you can barely,
00:06:16.480 you can barely even understand how that's possible, right? Like, it would be bad enough if the CRA got
00:06:21.160 the wrong answer 17% of the time, but they're only getting the right answer 17% of the time, meaning
00:06:27.180 that they're giving you the wrong information on your own personal tax questions 83% of the time. So
00:06:32.740 like, you trust these guys to do your taxes? Right? Like, like, and you even were talking about the
00:06:40.580 amount of bureaucrats that are in the CRA. And also, you're talking about the complicated tax act, like
00:06:48.520 it's like 3000 something pages or something like that. And you're saying we should simplify it basically, to make
00:06:54.840 it easier. Um, like, how did it even, I just want to know, how did it get to be that bad? Like,
00:07:01.480 and so complicated to begin with? Well, it's, it's pure political incentives, right? Oh, these
00:07:06.340 politicians, let's, let's do, you know, this niche tax credit here, you know, another niche tax credit
00:07:11.540 there. You know, what about this subsidy? Let's introduce this subsidy. And like, over the years,
00:07:16.100 it's those types of incentives that lead to the monstrosity that is now the income tax act,
00:07:20.620 right? So you brought up this like dichotomy, uh, you know, more bureaucrats are a simplified tax
00:07:25.800 system. Well, let's get at the heart of the, of the matter here, right? When you ask the CRA
00:07:30.700 about your own personal taxes, they give the right answer only 17% of the time. So we don't need more
00:07:37.700 bureaucrats at the CRA given, giving out more wrong answers. No, I mean, what this auditor general report
00:07:44.340 shows is that the tax code is so complicated that nobody has any idea what's going on, including the
00:07:50.580 CRA bureaucrats, right? So the obvious solution here to make tax season, uh, simpler for both,
00:07:56.500 both taxpayers and the tax collectors is, is really to simplify the tax system. And let me just, uh,
00:08:01.980 throw out a, uh, uh, a comparison here. So the income tax act is now 3,600 pages long for comparison.
00:08:10.600 That's about the same size as the entire, uh, seven book Harry Potter series, right? So, uh, you want to
00:08:17.920 make tax season simpler for Canadian taxpayers, then you got to simplify the tax code.
00:08:24.280 Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, let's see.
00:08:29.960 Well, Hey, let me jump into the bureaucracy because here's another thing, right? Uh, the CRA
00:08:34.760 is one of the biggest, most bloated arms of the federal government. Okay. The CRA already has more
00:08:41.180 than 50,000 bureaucrats. Well, let's do a little comparison again. Uh, in the U S the internal revenue
00:08:46.800 service has about 90,000 bureaucrats for a much bigger tax base. So here in Canada, there is one
00:08:53.720 CRA bureaucrat for every 800 Canadians in the U S there's one IRS bureaucrat for every 3,800 Americans.
00:09:04.320 Yeah, that's, that's pretty wild. Uh, on that note, um, I guess, do you think that, uh, since you've been
00:09:11.960 like working at the CTA for very, like a few years now? Um, I just want to know, do you think like the
00:09:18.280 CRA is one of like the worst in terms of like how many employees they have versus the effectiveness of
00:09:25.400 their actual work? Well, I don't know how you get much worse than the CRA. And like, I mean, like,
00:09:31.320 this is not even like for me stating this. I mean, look at the auditor general report. I've said this a
00:09:36.200 bunch of times, but it's so crazy. I'm going to repeat it. Right. When you call the CRA and ask a personal
00:09:41.640 tax question, they give out the right answer. What 17% of the time, like, is it even possible
00:09:47.960 to get much worse than that? And then, okay, let's talk about business taxes because you know,
00:09:52.040 we all know that the business community has a difficult time dealing with the CRA,
00:09:56.040 but even with business tax questions, it's like a coin flip on whether or not you'll get the right
00:10:01.080 answer from the CRA. And even then, uh, the, the completeness of the response is like 30%, but Hey,
00:10:08.120 all of that assumes that you can get a CRA bureaucrat on the phone. And that's a huge
00:10:13.160 assumption, assumption, right? Because like the auditor general also found that, um, only about 32%
00:10:20.040 of Canadians phone calls actually made it to a CRA bureaucrat. Yeah. I think that's all the questions
00:10:25.560 I had for you today. So thank you very much, Franco. I appreciate you coming on. Yeah.
00:10:31.240 That was fun. Thank you. Okay. If you guys enjoyed this whatsoever, you should check out our website.
00:10:38.440 It is $10 a month. If you subscribe or a hundred dollars a year. Um, yeah. Also check out our
00:10:44.280 YouTube channel. It's Western standard and yeah. Thank you very much, everyone. And goodbye.