I’ve had an interesting conversation with a couple of my colleagues where some of them have mentioned that in order for someone to become a client of their firm, they require the client’s personal authorization request.
I’m wondering if this is something widespread that other firms follow with their practice. I’ve got some clients where they get nervous having to authorize us as representatives or occasionally sometimes, the CRA calls the client to verify whether they’ve authorized us or not. Some clients forget to mention my firm’s name which ends up making me nervous that the CRA wouldn’t renew my e-file number…
About the first thing I mention when talking to a prospect is that I will need their personal authorization to enable me to do for them what they want done. If I don’t get that, I won’t be doing their taxes.
Interesting…I assume you guys operate your practices online.
I have a store front office so my firm doesn’t have a policy like this, but I’m thinking to adopt something like it.
I am almost exclusively online and many of my clients are not even in town since I handle primarily international issues so being able to download things ahead of time saves on typing too.
We are a physical office too, and yes, T1 authorizations are mandatory for all T1 clients, and we also get T1 authorizations for most T2 clients - even if we don’t do their T1s.
I’m not even sure what we would do without AFR during tax season now, lol. But also for planning for owner remuneration from corporations it is useful to know what our clients are reporting in other income on their personal returns. We’ll often go so far as to discount the Comp/T2 engagement by the amount of the T1 bill if that is what it takes to get a client to let us do everything. But some clients just want to file their own T1s regardless.
I only started having all my clients authorize me on their CRA accounts starting in 2017 forward. Prior to that, it was only on a need to basis. Today, there are only a handful of clients left who haven’t authorized me yet, of which two of those signed their AuthReps this morning. I’ve made it mandatory after observing from RAC that clients weren’t giving me all their tax slips, or weren’t giving me there NOA’s showing available carryforwards. After getting approval on some of my old clients, I discovered undeducted RRSP’s from years earlier waiting to be claimed. Just this week, I had a client who had a T5008 on RAC showing a $13,228 loss. The client didn’t receive the slip and didn’t know the broker disposed of the investment until I mentioned it to him. I applied the taxable capital loss to a capital gain he had in 2020. Couldn’t have done this without access to RAC for the information.
Effective Oct 2022, taxpayers have to use their My Account to add us as their tax representative before we can review their tax account and download tax slips. Existing clients will not be affected, but new clients have to apply for their “My Account” if they do not have one before.
Lok Ki Ho & Co.
Chartered Professional Accountant #2325-8888 Odlin Crescent, Richmond, BC, Canada V6X 3Z8
Tel : (604) 288-1028 Fax : (604) 288-1026
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I would do the same as well however it looks like some clients don’t care enough to provide their entire documents which ends up costing us extra time to prepare adjustments that shouldn’t have been done in the first place. We’ve had instances as well this year where the client had provided us slips but it wasn’t the complete accurate picture of the results.
I really appreciate the insight about this and have decided to implement this into our practice as well.
@lokki, I think the Oct 2022 CRA RAC change you are talking about only applies to the AuthRepBus where taxpayers have to authorize the representative before we can review their CRA account. I’ve e-filed quite a few T1 AuthRep forms this tax season and received immediate access to their account, including the ability to download tax slips, including the two I submitted this morning. No additional authorization was required by the client. Although I have had clients tell me that CRA contacted them later to verify that they authorized me on their account.
What I am finding recently is that the CRA Client Summary does not want to print to PDF. I’ve been forced to use the SAVE button and save as HTML which takes longer to download. Having a PDF of this screen gives me quick access to that information without having to log back into CRA to acquire it, and it gives me a history to go back to helping to identify when a before and after change occurred in a clients CRA file. Although, much of the information on this screen is already available in the AFR and CDE tabs in TaxCycle.
I use the free download software CutePDF Writer
This creates a PDF printer on your computer.
Any time you print… you can choose to print to your regular printer or using the drop down, you select CutePDF.
It saves it to a PDF file.
Time saving, paper saving, and simple
My experience was that the AFR multiple authorizations issue was due to the RepID being associated to more than one firm, each with authorization for a particular client.
I don’t have any problem with CRA Authorization to Represent but having trouble how to Efile the Quebec personal taxes since it needs you to Authorize first by getting the Professional Representative number in MR69. Do I have to call Quebec Revenue or there is remedy in the TaxCycle?
You need to register to obtain your professional representative account, then you can activate your netfile account through the professional representative system.
There are some requirements though. If you are filing as an individual, you will need a Quebec Personal Account and an associated business account. If you are filing as a corporation, you will need an account at the Quebec Enterprise Registry. Of course, you need to maintain these accounts, which means that you need to file Quebec returns, both personal and business. Failing to file the various tax returns and failing to maintain your Quebec Enterprise Registration will means that you are non-compliant with tax legislation so can’t file for others.
I would suggest that futher discussion on this topic would be separate topic to this particular thread and should be continued only in its own conversation.
I would like to appreciate everyone for their responses. We’re coming close to end of tax season and we may be late to the game but we’ve adopted the authorization request policy into our firm’s practice.
I’m honestly quite shocked that the clients we’ve never had their authorization with, were missing a bunch of slips and the CRA did not have the curtsey to amend any of the returns that had inaccurate information!!
Lesson learned on my side…looks like their is money to make for the adjustments
