Taxpayers’ Ombudsman

If you feel that your service rights have been neglected while dealing with the CRA, you can always contact the Taxpayer's Ombudsman and make a complaint. It is the Taxpayers' Ombudsman's responsibility to ensure that the taxpayers' rights are respected by the CRA at all times. The service rights outlined in the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights include numbers 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14 and 15. Please check my previous blog entry for the complete Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights.

The Taxpayers’ Ombudsman provides independent and impartial reviews of complaints about how the CRA serves and treats taxpayers, and addresses systematic problems that affect many taxpayers.

Mistakes, undue delays, misleading information and staff behavior on the part of the CRA fall under the service-related complaints that the Taxpayers’ Ombudsman takes care of.

Through the assistance of the ombudsman, the CRA has issued apologies, released bank accounts they had seized, cancelled penalties and interests they were charging, reviewed some of its policies and procedures and in some cases, ended collection activities.

Please note that the Taxpayers’ Ombudsman’s responsibilities does not include complaints that are not service related such as those related to tax policy, program legislation, matters that are before the courts and matters that other statutory bodies would deal with. In addition to this, the Taxpayers’ Ombudsman does not direct the CRA to take action.

Before contacting the Taxpayers’ Ombudsman, you should allow the CRA to resolve your complaint within a reasonable amount of time by trying to resolve your issue with the CRA employee you have been dealing with or with the employee’s supervisor. If you are not satisfied with the way they dealt with you, you may file a formal complaint with the CRA by submitting a completed Form RC193, Service-Related Complaint. If you are still not satisfied with the way the CRA dealt with your complaint, you may contact the Office of the Taxpayers’ Ombudsman. There are no costs with filing a complaint or for any service rendered by the Taxpayers’ Ombudsman.