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If someone can’t handle the tasks required of them at their current job, is it wise to hand them a massive new set of responsibilities? If you think not, consider the implications of the Trudeau government’s recent throne speech pledge to implement what it calls an “automatic tax filing” system.
It won’t actually be “automatic,” of course, but rather would entail entrusting the army of nearly 44,000 bureaucrats working at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to file millions of Canadians’ income tax forms on their behalf. And though most people would certainly enjoy being spared precious hours on a task that can by turns be painfully complex and mind-numbingly tedious, given the importance of the job and the track record of the agency in question, it’s fair to ask how much faith one should have in the final product.
For starters, the CRA has a huge vested interest in maximizing the revenue it can generate. That can’t bode well for taxpayers when there’s a subjective call to be made between paying a little bit more tax or a little bit less. After all, the CRA’s job is not to save you money. Its job is to try to squeeze as much as it can out of you.