Western Standard - November 03, 2025


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


Episode Stats

Length

10 minutes

Words per Minute

175.30925

Word Count

1,918

Sentence Count

97


Summary

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

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.
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