Principal Issues: Can the CRA provide some information about the results of the ITRD internal evaluation process?
Position: General information provided.
Reasons: See below.
2021 CTF Annual Conference
CRA Roundtable
Question 13: Income Tax Rulings Directorate - Internal Evaluation and Service Enhancements
We understand that the Income Tax Rulings Directorate recently underwent an internal evaluation process. Can you provide us with some information about the results?
CRA Response
The recent internal evaluation of our directorate was undertaken to assess how well the program has been achieving expected outcomes, and to identify potential options for improvement. As part of this process, the CRA’s Audit, Evaluation, and Risk Branch interviewed employees, tax industry representatives, officials from similar programs in other jurisdictions, and our clients (perhaps including some participants at this event today). Their report was published on Canada.ca (footnote 1) in June, including two recommendations for us to better meet our goals.
We would like to thank everyone who responded to requests from the evaluation team for input, as the results were informative and will help us enhance our program.
The evaluation results showed that while clients are generally quite satisfied with our staff and the quality of the interpretive positions we issue, the timeliness of our products can be a concern. This is a concern for us as well, as it may lead to situations where opinions are not requested because of the amount of time that would be involved. To address this, the directorate is reviewing its service model and priorities for options to reduce the turnaround time for advance income tax rulings and technical interpretations. We will have more information for you about this when the process is more advanced.
It was also recommended that we change our performance measurement practices to enhance transparency and better capture client expectations. To respond to this, we are taking steps to make our service results for the rulings and interpretations we deliver to you more visible. Starting with this year’s outcomes, we will make our service standard results accessible through the CRA’s Information Circular IC70-6R, “Advance Income Tax Rulings and Technical Interpretations”. This means that starting next year, when you consult that Information Circular, you can see both our current service offering, and how often we met our service targets when we issued advance income tax rulings and technical interpretations to members of the public the previous year.
We will also be reintroducing the use of post-engagement surveys when we issue advance income tax rulings and technical interpretations, to help us stay abreast of emerging service needs. We plan to begin this practice next spring, but will defer our start date if we hear from clients that they would prefer to not receive these requests while they are still dealing with the impacts of the pandemic on their work.
Robin Howard
2021-091207
November 25, 2021
FOOTNOTES
Note to reader: Because of our system requirements, the footnotes contained in the original document are shown below instead:
1 CANADA REVENUE AGENCY, Evaluation - Income Tax Rulings Directorate, March 2021 (online: Evaluation – Income Tax rulings Directorate - Canada.ca).