The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is under fire from the Taxpayers’ Ombudsperson for having a website so confusing it is actually driving people to the phone lines. In a rare public call for “greater urgency,” François Boileau is demanding the agency fix its digital tools to stop wasting taxpayers’ time and resources.
Despite a massive hiring spree that has seen the CRA grow to roughly 53,000 employees, the agency is still struggling to keep up with demand. A review by the Ombudsperson’s office published yesterday found that the CRA’s web pages are often a maze of bad design. For example, when someone wants to change their personal information, the website suggests mail or phone options just as prominently as digital ones. The site fails to even mention that using the online portal is faster, easier, and secure.
The report highlights that the “Contact the CRA” page is especially difficult to navigate. Instead of helping people solve problems quickly online, the poor layout pushes frustrated Canadians to call the contact centres. This creates a bottleneck where agents are stuck answering simple questions that should have been clear on the website, while people with complex tax issues are left waiting on hold.
“Taxpayers deserve a world-class tax administration that meets their needs in a timely manner. In the wake of the 100-day service improvement plan, the CRA has hired more contact centre agents to help taxpayers, but demand still exceeds capacity. The CRA must make changes with greater urgency and address the root causes of service issues rather than just treat the symptoms. This is the key to long-term success,” said François Boileau, Taxpayers’ Ombudsperson, in a statement on Thursday.
The size of the agency’s workforce makes these service failures even harder to swallow. Ten years ago, the CRA employed roughly 40,000 people. Since then, the headcount has exploded by over 30%, yet the capacity issues are still there. Boileau noted that while the CRA hired more agents as part of a recent 100-day service plan, they are merely treating the “symptoms” of the problem rather than fixing the “root causes”, which are the agency’s own confusing online presence.
The Ombudsperson is urging the CRA to prioritize self-service options and remove accessibility barriers. Fixing the website would allow the agency to move staff away from basic phone inquiries and toward clearing the massive backlogs that continue to delay tax processing for Canadians. The report comes ahead of the April 30 federal income tax deadline.
It’s not just the Ombudsperson that has the CRA under fire. Last fall, the Auditor General slammed the CRA for spending $18 million on a chatbot named ‘Charlie’, which gave wrong answers, but that still pales in comparison to the $60+ million spent on the ArriveCAN app.
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must be hard to find a website designer, if you think the cra website is bad the msca website feels like its from 2005, half the links to anything doesnt work
Must be hard to think one dimensionally and downplaying the systematic and chronic issues with the CRA. msca? yeah,you want us to maybe stop complaining?
CRA is hiring family and inept people. What’s so hard to swallow about this?