Canada's Taxpayers' Ombudsperson, Mr. François Boileau, has released his annual report, Clearing the Path, which was tabled today in the House of Commons. The report provides an overview of the activities of the Office of the Taxpayers' Ombudsperson (OTO) between April 1, 2024, and March 31, 2025.
The report details how the OTO influenced service improvements at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) by reviewing service issues and complaints. It also includes two recommendations to the Minister of Finance and National Revenue and the Chair of the CRA's Board of Management to improve the CRA's service to Canadians.
During the last fiscal year, the OTO released two systemic examination reports: Unintended Consequences, about the CRA's administration of the 2023 bare trust filing requirements, and Timing Is Everything, about issues that may be causing delays in Canada child benefit (CCB) payments for temporary residents. Between these two reports, we made 16 recommendations, and the CRA accepted 13 of them.
As this is the final year of Mr. Boileau's five-year mandate, the annual report also includes a chapter about his views on improving the CRA's services for vulnerable and hard‑to-reach populations. This chapter analyzes the CRA's efforts to make sure these populations get the benefits and credits they are entitled to. It looks at the CRA's existing programs, including the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program, the Income Tax Assistance - Volunteer Program (in Quebec) and SimpleFile, and discusses how they could be improved to better meet Canadians' needs.
2024-2025 report highlights:
Recommendations
The Taxpayers' Ombudsperson recommends:
- (…) that the CRA perform a comprehensive review of its content on Canada.ca, including its web page architecture and content, to remove redundant information and to make sure the information it provides is relevant, clear, concise and easy to find. It should complete this review by spring 2026 and start implementing changes by fall 2026.
- (…) that the CRA provide a permanently funded grant program for organizations participating in the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program and the Income Tax Assistance - Volunteer Program to support their free tax clinics for eligible taxpayers and help them offset their operating costs.
Trends in complaints
- Contact centres: The top trend relates to issues with the information provided by contact centre agents. Many taxpayers who were able to reach the CRA's contact centres claimed that agents provided them with incomplete, inaccurate, or unclear information, while others were unable to even reach an agent because the wait times were too long or they could not get into the queue.
