Auditor General's Report Highlights Ongoing CRA Service And Oversight Challenges

Canadians rely on the Canada Revenue Agency ("CRA") for clear, timely, and accurate guidance on tax and benefit matters. As Canada's national tax regulator, the CRA administers a self-reporting tax system that depends on individuals and businesses to accurately assess and disclose their own tax obligations. Yet, the 2025 Report of the Auditor General of Canada to Parliament on the CRA's Contact Centres revealed significant gaps in service delivery, raising concerns about accessibility, accuracy, and oversight.

The Office of the Auditor General ("OAG") conducted a performance audit under the Auditor General Act to assess whether the CRA's eight national contact centres were providing accurate and timely information to taxpayers and businesses. The findings indicate that despite technological upgrades and a substantial telephony services contract intended to modernize call centre operations, the CRA falls short of its own service standards and of taxpayer expectations.

For businesses, charities, not-for-profits, and individuals seeking reliable tax guidance, these findings highlight a deeper issue: when taxpayers must self-report within a system that cannot consistently provide correct information, compliance becomes a difficult objective. The audit challenges the assumption that good faith reliance on CRA advice necessarily protects taxpayers from liability.

Audit finds major service failures at CRA contact centres

The OAG's recent performance audit of the CRA revealed significant gaps in timeliness, access, and general‑information accuracy across contact centres in 2024 and 2025. Only 18% of calls met the 15‑minute service standard, and the average time to reach an agent doubled year-over-year to 31 minutes, even as more services were shifted to online self-service.

Accuracy rates for non‑account‑specific questions were concerningly low, as individual-tax questions were only correct 17% of the time, while for benefits and business tax questions, accuracy reached 56% and 54%, respectively. The Taxpayer Bill of Rights sets out fundamental rights and obligations that guide the CRA's relationship with Canadians, emphasizing complete, accurate, clear, and timely information. The OAG findings show these principles are not being met in practice.

In contrast, the CRA's own quality-monitoring program rated accuracy significantly higher, at more than 87%. However, the OAG determined that internal evaluations overlooked errors and inconsistencies, with only 9% of an agent's performance score was related to accuracy and completeness, while 45% focused on schedule adherence and call duration. The gap between reported and actual accuracy calls into question the CRA's internal accountability and the reliability of its service metrics.

To address these issues, the OAG recommended that the CRA realign staffing levels with call volumes, streamline agent tools and procedures, and triage system-related MyAccount inquiries, questions related to the CRA's online self-service portal for viewing and managing tax and benefit information, separately from general calls.

Fiscal management and program delivery concerns

The audit also examined the CRA's telephony system, developed under the Hosted Contact Centre Service ("HCCS"), contract managed by Shared Services Canada ("SSC") and supplied by IBM. The OAG found little evidence of invoice validation or performance monitoring. Both SSC and the CRA relied heavily on vendor-provided data without verifying usage metrics, an approach inconsistent with financial control and due diligence obligations.

Initially valued at $50 million over 10 years, the contract has ballooned to $190 million as of June 2025, with several core features of the HCCS system, such as workforce-management automation and real-time queue updates, still not fully deployed.

The findings raise concerns as taxpayers are funding substantial investments in infrastructure that have yet to deliver measurable benefits to the public, with costs on unfinished projects like the HCCS system likely to continue to increase.

These gaps run contrary to the Treasury Board Secretariat'sDirective on the Management of Projects and Programmes, which mandates that federal projects be effectively planned, implemented, monitored, and controlled. As a key oversight body, the Treasury Board is responsible for ensuring that federal organizations, including the CRA, as a separate agency under Schedule V of the Financial Administration Act, adhere to sound financial-management and project-governance standards.

CRA accelerates hiring and service reforms under 100-day Plan

On October 21, 2025, the Minister of Finance and National Revenue and the Secretary of State (Canada Revenue Agency and Financial Institutions) acknowledged the OAG's findings and outlined progress under the 100‑day Service Improvement Plan that was launched in early September. The plan centres on four pillars:

1. Increasing call centre capacity
2. Expanding online self‑service
3. Tackling root causes of service issues
4. Accelerating service modernization

Since September 8, 2025, the CRA has hired additional staff, extended term contracts, and introduced reforms to make it easier for taxpayers to self‑serve their tax requirements. The CRA has also agreed to revise its evaluation framework by September 2026, pledging to prioritize quality over productivity and introduce robotic process automation into the quality-review process.

In parallel, SSC and the CRA have also committed to strengthening contract management and have signed a new Contact Centre as a Service agreement to replace the HCCS platform by 2027. The new system is expected to incorporate lessons learned, enhanced billing transparency, and improved operational alignment.

While these steps suggest movement in the right direction, they do not yet address the systemic issue at the heart of the audit: a self-reporting system cannot function effectively when taxpayers lack trust in the information provided by the authority charged with administering it.

Adapting to CRA's evolving service environment

The OAG's findings expose more than operational ineffectiveness; they reveal serious risks to taxpayer confidence in the country's self-reporting tax system. When CRA agents provide incorrect or incomplete information, honest taxpayers can be misled into filing incorrect returns, missing deadlines, or otherwise making errors that may trigger audits, penalties, and interest.

Although the CRA's 100-Day Service Improvement Plan includes technology upgrades and enhanced monitoring, meaningful progress will depend on restoring accuracy and accountability in taxpayer communications. Until these deficiencies are resolved, taxpayers should exercise caution when relying on call-centre advice and verify all substantive positions against the Income Tax Act, CRA publications, and professional legal advice.

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