Helpful government employee, not an oxymoron after all
Posted by admin, Fri Jun 22 03:00:28 UTC 2007
I sat down at my desk today, dreading the task ahead. The increasing shrill and threatening notices I have been receiving from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) really had to be dealt with today. But I wasn’t looking forward to it.
You see, I made such a simple mistake almost a year ago. I have my own company, 100% owned by me, and through it I do my consulting work. I pay myself as an employee. Under the CRA rules, that makes me EI exempt (I don’t pay Employment Insurance, nor does my company, because I’m self-employed). Last year, in the summer, I was using the strange little application that the CRA puts out called TOD (for historical reasons, Tables On Diskette), which calculates the payroll withholdings (Federal and Provincial Taxes, IE deductions, Canada Pension Plan deductions, etc). And I missed the little “EI exempt” checkbox. Once. So, I ended up submitting an EI deduction to the government for one month.
At T4 time (yearly payroll tax summary/receipt) in February, I noticed all this, and submitted the T4 summary, corrected for the mistake in the EI deduction. Or so I thought. In April, the CRA started sending me these nasty notes about how I was ripping them off for the EI deductions from last year, and I now owed them about $1500.
Argh.
It’s been a VERY busy few months, so I was ignoring this, but the last round of forms started adding interest to the $1500 assessment, so I figured it was past time to get it straightened out. I pulled out all the paperwork, started up NeoOffice, and started writing a letter to the CRA, to explain all this. Then I noticed the “If you need help with this review, please call…” on the last form they sent. Hmmm. What if I could just call and fix this? It was worth a shot, wasn’t it?
After a simple two-level IVR phone system, in under a minute I was talking to a real person. She brought up my account, and I gave her the sad story. I expected a run-around. I expected to have to mail and/or FAX a bunch of supporting documents to correct this problem. What I didn’t expect was this:
She said, “Don’t worry about it. This was obviously a mistake. Don’t respond to any of the assessment notices, or fill out any of the forms. I’ll take care of it.”
... here’s me at my desk with my jaw sitting down on the floor…
I’m afraid I didn’t get your name, Ms. CRA Employee, but you made my whole day, and I thank you for it!
