Do You Have a CRA Horror Story?

Canada’s tax code is too complicated and we’re all paying for it

Mike Moffatt

Sabrina Maddeaux

, and

Meredith Martin

Oct 29, 2025

The Canada Revenue Agency is facing a public crisis marked by long delays, incorrect assessments, and frustrated taxpayers. Hosts Sabrina Maddeaux and Mike Moffatt unpack the CRA’s 100-day “fix,” why it’s only a Band-Aid solution, and the deeper structural issues inside Canada’s tax system. From call centre chaos to a tax code that even accountants struggle to understand, this episode explores how CRA policies are eroding public trust and what real reform would look like.

Mike also shares his personal experience battling denied medical expense claims and the endless back-and-forth with CRA agents. Together, they discuss the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, the agency’s growing enforcement powers, and why ordinary Canadians are being left behind by a broken system.

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Below is an AI-generated transcript of the Missing Middle podcast, which has been lightly edited.

Sabrina Maddeaux: Let’s start with some background on the CRA’s most recent troubles. In early September, the Federal Finance Minister gave the CRA a public 100-day deadline to fix its service delays. This was after many public complaints, and stats that showed between June 23rd and July 4th this year, the CRA answered only 37% of calls.

The agency now promises to answer 70% of calls by mid-October, with more agents, extended online chat hours, and enhanced AI chatbot capabilities, but as I wrote in the Toronto Star, even if they manage to meet these targets, it’s just a Band-Aid solution that completely misses the bigger problems plaguing the agency, and by extension, Canadian taxpayers.

Mike Moffatt: Yeah, so Sabrina, you’ll have to walk me through this. I read your story, and I was both in belief and disbelief. I was in disbelief because it’s so shocking, but also in belief. After all, I think we’ve all heard horror stories, and you mentioned 70% of calls. I can’t imagine if I went to order pizza, and I only got through seven times out of 10, that I would be particularly happy.

Sabrina Maddeaux: And that’s the goal. That’s what they would consider success.

Mike Moffatt: Well, exactly. So, can you walk me through this? The Finance Minister here is setting a deadline. He’s promising more call center agents, better hours, AI chatbots, and so on.

To me, that sounds like they’re taking action. Judging by your article, they’re not doing enough, and in your view, they’re not tackling what you call the real problem. Can you walk us through what you mean by that?

Sabrina Maddeaux: Right. So of course, these are good solutions, but they’re really just skimming the surface. The agency has really deep core issues that aren’t going to be fixed by more chatbots or even more agents.

One of the core issues is why so many people are even trying to contact the CRA at once, especially outside of tax season. The answer is because our tax code is overcomplicated with this narrow web of credits, deductions, and exemptions that have become so complex over time that even CRA agents and professional accountants are having trouble understanding the code.

Back in 2017, when the CRA still claimed to answer 90% of calls, the Auditor General found agents gave wrong answers to people 30% of the time, which is pretty shocking. Since then, our tax code has only gotten more complicated.

And now the chartered accountants in Canada also regularly critique our tangled tax system and the issues they have in understanding the code. How do you expect regular Canadians to do this? Ultimately, you’re not going to solve that by just hiring more agents or upgrading a chatbot.

Mike Moffatt: Yeah, that’s so interesting. We see that in so much of public policy, where the problem is actually symptomatic of something larger rather than just the problem itself.

You mentioned in your piece, the taxpayer’s ombudsperson and some data that they released about the CRA’s performance and the high level of complaints from Canadians. What are the specific complaints that Canadians have beyond that? Nobody really likes paying taxes.

Sabrina Maddeaux: Right. So the ombudsperson says his office is swamped, but that only 24% of those complaints stem from call center issues. It’s really the tax rules themselves and how they’re applied inconsistently a lot of the time that are the real problem. This tells us that just hiring more call center staff won’t solve those underlying issues that a lot of politicians would probably rather avoid.

You add to that, that CRA staffing and budgets have actually gone up quite significantly over the last several years. Yet these problems still get worse, so that’s not the fix. You can’t have a quick fix here.

Mike Moffatt: And you and I, we both write a lot of opinion pieces for the Star, the Globe, various outlets. There are some kinds of rhetorical tools we often use, like analogies and comparisons and that kind of thing. You used one that I thought was particularly interesting. You said that dealing with the CRA isn’t like the criminal justice system. So what exactly did you mean by that in that comparison?

Sabrina Maddeaux: Yeah, so it’s very different in that when you deal with the CRA.

If an issue arises, or you’re audited or you’re assessed, taxpayers are actually assumed guilty until they prove themselves innocent. So the onus is entirely on the taxpayer.

This is backwards from how the justice system usually works. That’s difficult enough for taxpayers on their own. Then you add the fact that they can’t reach anyone, and they’re getting wrong advice from the agency itself. And then you combine this with increasingly aggressive CRA enforcement and the federal Liberals’ disinterest in taxpayer rights. It creates a government agency that is actually actively harming Canadians’ interests.

You shouldn’t have to hire a professional accountant or tax lawyer to do your taxes, which is a very basic task in a lot of other countries. Quite frankly, most Canadians can’t afford to hire those types of professionals.

Mike Moffatt: Yeah, and I’m someone who has had to hire those professionals. Now, I do have a more complicated setup than most. Through that, I’ve received more than my fair share of CRA assessments over the years, some of which I thought were reasonable and some less so.

When it comes to the kind of “less so reasonable,” I don’t think I’m the only one. According to your piece, I’m not the only one who thinks that they’re receiving unreasonable assessments. What does the data show about how Canadians are reacting to assessments?

Sabrina Maddeaux: Not well, and this is a pretty crazy stat.

Objections nearly doubled from 64,712 in 2022 to 2023 to 128,386 in 2024 to 2025. You have to remember, this only represents those who successfully object within CRA's stringent time periods or who even bother to object, right?

Each objection means emotional and financial stress. Taxpayers have to dedicate time and resources to convincing CRA agents that they’re innocent. They might have to hire that professional representation or even go to court. As this is going on, the CRA can hold back refunds and benefit payments. This is especially cruel and increases hardship during a cost-of-living crisis and rising unemployment.

The time it’s taking to solve these objections, if they get resolved, is increasing as well. This is really a large burden being placed on taxpayers by a government agency.

Mike Moffatt: I’m someone who is inclined to believe the worst about the CRA because of my own personal experiences, but in the interest of fairness, let’s look at this from the other side or a potential different perspective. Do we really know what this means? Because it could just be disgruntled taxpayers getting more savvy about delaying what they owe, they’ve figured out some tricks to go, “Hey, if I object to this, object to that, I can slow things down.”

Could this be a sign that the CRA is doing its auditing and enforcement job even better than ever, rather than being a sign of problems at the CRA?

Sabrina Maddeaux: I understand how one could think that, but it is not. We have data on this, too. It’d be one thing if the CRA were right most of the time and collecting all these owed taxes, but in fact, it’s wrong the majority of the time. 62% of objections in 2024 to 2025 led to decisions in favour of taxpayers. That means at least 79,000 taxpayers were wrongfully assessed by the CRA in that year alone. Those are only those who had their objections filed within those time periods, who bothered to object.

Essentially, tens of thousands of Canadians are being put through stress, financial burdens and violations of their rights by a government agency, and for nothing. They did nothing wrong at all.

Mike Moffatt: Yeah, and your piece talked about, not just those errors, but the existence of something called the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

A lot of Canadians probably don’t even know that this thing exists. So first of all, I guess two questions here: What is the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights? And two, why, in your view, do you believe that the CRA is violating the Bill of Rights?

Sabrina Maddeaux: So Canada does have a Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. You can read the full thing on the Government of Canada’s website, and the CRA is supposed to adhere to this. This includes rights to receive entitlements and pay no more and no less than what is required by law, to be treated objectively, courteously and fairly, to complete accurate, clear and timely information, and to expect the CRA to be accountable.

Now, with everything we’ve talked about, the CRA is clearly and consistently violating many of these rights. And where are politicians? I’m not hearing anything. So, taxpayer rights are fundamental to any functioning democracy and to our faith in institutions and the government serving taxpayers.

The federal government really needs to step up and protect these rights. This requires more than just call centre staff or increased budgets. This requires wholesale reform of both the CRA and the Income Tax Act so that Canadians can have faith in the system again and be treated fairly.

Now, Mike, it’s pretty clear where I stand on all this. There’s a reason why this topic appealed to you, too, when I put it in the group chat. I hear that you have some personal experience with the CRA and the exact types of issues we’ve talked about. Do you care to share?

Mike Moffatt: Yeah, absolutely. So your Toronto Star piece absolutely spoke to me. I’ve always, in most of my adult life, had a more complicated tax situation than most. I’ve been a small business owner, and I’ve worked multiple jobs, so we’ve always used tax professionals because we not only have to file income tax, but also GST and things like that. For the most part, we were using a tax professional, and for the most part, all of that was relatively smooth.

Until we had a son who has a very profound disability and racks up incredible medical expenses each year. It’s a lot. I mean, we’re looking at about $40,000 per year in medical expenses. It’s the kind of thing where if it’s a few bucks here or there, I wouldn’t bother, but it’s a lot.

We still use tax professionals, but the challenge that we have is that when you file your taxes electronically, there’s no way to submit all of those receipts to the CRA.

First of all, the fact that we even have to do it, why can’t the healthcare provider do it on our behalf? Why are we doing that paperwork? I think is the first question. The second question is: Why can’t we submit all of those receipts along with our tax return?

What happens every single year is that all of those claims get denied, and they get denied because there’s no paperwork. So then we have to go back and submit the paperwork, and there’s a bunch of back and forth, and it just takes all this time. I can totally understand the CRA not just rubber-stamping some guy who claims $40,000 in medical expenses. We don’t want that either.

There’s got to be a better system to get these receipts, get these expenses to the CRA, rather than every single year we submit a tax return, and every single year the CRA comes back to us and says, “Nope, you don’t have the documentation, your claim is denied.”

Sabrina Maddeaux: “But we’re not going to give you a way to electronically submit the documentation. So we’ll put you through prolonged hell instead.”

Mike Moffatt: Yeah, like we can send it off later. Then I have to follow up with calls and go through all of this rigmarole around waiting and so on. It’s just an absolute mess.

I just don’t want to deal with it. I’m just trying to get my kid health care in a system where, supposedly, we have government health care. There is no private system. That’s a different episode that we can talk about how a guy like me is racking up $40,000 in health expenses a year in a system that supposedly has full coverage. But it’s such a problem. You really spoke to me around this idea that we’re not addressing the real problem.

The real problem I have is not that I can’t get a CRA agent on the phone. The real problem is that I have to in the first place. If I could just submit these documents, or even better yet, have the health care provider submit the documents on my behalf, the same way that my private insurance does, then we could bypass all of this.

It’s so very unnecessary. That’s why when I had my coffee, had my morning paper, read your piece, and you didn’t give me a heads up that it was coming. I saw this, and I’m like, this is fantastic, because it really spoke to me.

Sabrina Maddeaux: Well, I think it will speak to a lot of Canadians, because when you go on, whether it’s social media or Reddit, or you just talk to family and friends, it seems like everyone’s had some sort of experience like yours with the CRA to varying degrees and over different things.

It’s about them getting things wrong or not providing the ability to file properly to begin with, or the tax code being so overcomplicated that people can’t understand it. Then you add up the hours, whether it’s parents like yourself, or small business owners, or freelancers, or just average workers who are trying to make it in this economy with two or three jobs. All those hours spent.

I was on Reddit the other day, and I saw stories of people having to take days off from work to contact the CRA and get their tax situation in order. That’s not a functioning system, and that’s not how a country should work in this day and age.

Hopefully, politicians do begin to pay attention, because I think people are just going to get angrier, and it’s actually going to destroy faith in the system, where people are going to say, “Well, if this is what it is, then I’m not going to file taxes at all,” which is not what we want to end up happening either.

Thank you, everyone, for watching and listening. And to our producer, Meredith Martin.

Mike Moffatt: If you have nightmare CRA stories you care to share, please leave a comment or send us an email to [email protected]

Sabrina Maddeaux: And we’ll see you next time.