Canadians who file their taxes online will have a few more options at their fingertips this year, as the Canada Revenue Agency continues to build out services like Netfile and My Account.
This tax season, taxpayers will be able to view their notice of assessment or reassessment online in the My Account section of the CRA website if they sign up for something called "online mail." They'll receive email notification when their assessment is ready and will not receive it by post. The CRA plans to progressively make other other types of correspondence available this way.
"Our goal is to replace the 120 million pieces of mail we are sending out each year with a fast, secure and green electronic correspondence service," CRA spokesman Philippe Brideau told CBC News.
Two other improvements: All CRA-certified tax software will this year send returns directly to Netfile — so, no more uploading those .tax files yourself — and the CRA is also introducing a service for tax preparers who use Efile to file returns on behalf of clients that will automatically fill in certain fields on a return.
Called Tax Data Delivery, the system will make available to the tax preparer information from a client's T4 slips, RRSPs, capital gains and losses, universal child care benefit statements and other tax-related documents as long as the taxpayer has authorized the preparer to have access to that information — by filling out a T1013 form. This authorization can be cancelled or changed online at any time.
How we filed in 2014
Paper: 6,154,033 (22%)
Netfile: 7,200,084 (25%)
EFile: 14,941,583 (53%)
Total: 28,295,700 (100%)
Source: Canada Revenue Agency
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