Tax time is over here for most people but I was reading this how the Canada Revenue Agency has sent out invites for people to use its SimpleFile tax program which is supposed to automatically file people’s taxes for them. Apparently this is meant for less complex situations where each year the individual pretty much does the exact same type of filings. This was what the press release stated:
“This July, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) expanded its SimpleFile services (phone, digital, and paper) to invite more than 500,000 eligible lower-income individuals to file their return and potentially gain access to important benefit and credit payments.
This automatic tax filing national pilot targets individuals who have never filed a tax return or who have a gap in their filing history, and builds upon the success of small-scale SimpleFile pilots previously undertaken by the CRA.
In early 2024, the CRA invited more than 1.5 million individuals with a lower income or a fixed income and who are in a simple tax situation that remains unchanged from year to year to use SimpleFile by Phone, double the number from the previous year. To date, more than 90% of the invitees have filed their tax return using a variety of filing methods the CRA offers.
SimpleFile is a key Budget 2024 commitment and the CRA is on track to further increase the number of invitations to two million for tax season 2025.”
I suppose having other options is good. Although it is interesting how they note that it is targeting people who have missed filing their taxes as that makes it sound more like the motivation is to collect more money huh?