I thought as of some date that has passed, all CRA correspondence was going to go into an individuals tax account.and could be viewed online.
Lo and behold, CRA processing review letters after t1 season are coming in by mail.
I find this quite annoying! Doesnt it defeat the purpose of what CRA was trying to do?
It has always been thus. Some come by mail, some by email, some go to the taxpayer, some come to us…and some….never arrive. Then we get the reassessment and say…”huh”?
Yup, no logic, rhyme or reason. Just like CRA in general for their operations.
Worst “choose your own adventure” ever
What is good for thee is not for me…. They expect all to be filed online when they are still licking evenlopes and stamps and relying on the all secure Canada Post to deliver their messages.
This! LOL I feel you!
@theadman if that is not enough they do not put review letters on the clients CRA account. We have had three clients now that have been re-assessed and CRA has said they had sent review letter and client swears they have not received them. Let’s get on top of this game and send all correspondence to CRA by mail or CRA drop box.
If you can find a CRA drop box within 100 km of me….please let me know. 
They might as well be in China.
Check here
Oh, I know where they are. Nowhere near me.
Which, of course, is a problem for the millions of Canadians and thousands of tax pros that don’t live in urban centres.
Rather like the “you must drive an EV” mandate…gov’t rarely thinks about the rural people who live in the middle of everywhere and close to not much.
Yay! The closest one to me is only 230 km away from me! Such wonderful service.
Pat Gamborg
PAT’s OFFICE
PO Box 1225
Digby,NS B0V 1A0
Phone 902-378-2021
Well mine is even closer, but to get there you have to fight lots of traffic unless you go when every one else is in bed. Are the drop boxes drive by? If not, then we have the added problem of finding a parking spot.
Right now, I’m in Dartmouth. It’s a short ride from the 'hood to the CRA office in Bayers Lake in Halifax. If you do walk inside, you’d think you were in Fort Knox. There might be a person coming out one door and going in another, but the guy paying for the whole thing gets to pick up the phone and announce that you have an appointment which might get you to one of their secret compartments. And, I’ve never seen one of the minions empty the grey box outside the door. Probably requires 2 guards to go with the retriever. I remember the good old days when CRA was in the Ralston Bldg on Hollis St., downtown Halifax. You’d park outside in a no parking zone and walk in. A cashier would take whatever payment you were making and give you a receipt. If you were dropping off a dozen tax returns, you’d walk up to the mail counter, pass over your pkg with 2 copies of your enclosure letter. They’d date-stamp your copy, initial it, and give it back to you. And, there were people in that building who would actually help you. They could make a decision and fix your problem, or give you the right advice immediately. On April 30 you’d have a list of post offices that were open till midnight. Just before midnight, you’d show up at one with your pkg of T1’s to mail. You left there with a post office receipt showing the date & time your pkg was accepted. Then you’d go back to your office, set your computer to batch print a dozen returns, make sure your dot matrix printer had a good supply of paper and that the tractor mechanism was aligned, and go home. The next morning, you’d reprint the whole batch because the paper jammed overnight and all your returns had printed on a single line on the jammed paper. You’d then go to the lunch room for a coffee, a cookie, and a smoke or two.
yep this exact thing is what prompted my post….get it together CRA…at least be consistent.
The closest one to me is… 9 blocks away. Do I really trust that a delivery to that place will be looked at? Nope. I send it registered if it has to go on paper.
For the Service complaints… sorry, complements, I have switched to mailing them it. Which I think that some people will be amused by my latest complement to the CRA. “Please be advised that, given that the telephone operators have been instructed not provide anticipated timeframe for completing processing, we are not using the electronic submittal system to request updates on files. We have attached a copy of our most recent request for an update for ****." And submitted the request for an update using the same reference number that the response was submitted three months ago.
By the way, while I have not been doing this long, I will affirm that it generally takes three weeks of submitting requests for updates on semi-daily basis that they spit back a completed review request. I make it very clear that I am submitting the request through the electronic system as the operators have specific instruction to not disclose the status of the review.
This does defeat the purpose and if the letter is lost in the mail then the taxpayer is still liable if they do not respond. I heard this in a Federal Tax Court hearing. Beyond 19th century tactics. CRA just has to prove they sent it. Send all requests to CRA by mail. Watch them come to a grinding halt. Wait…they already are…?
If I send things by mail to CRA I send it Registered Mail. Oh! The Post Office has also ground to a halt.
G Wise