Calls to the CRA's call centres overall were down 46 per cent this tax-filing season compared to the previous one, the agency said, attributing the drop in part to its suite of digital tools to resolve issues online.Giordano Ciampini/The Canadian Press
The Canada Revenue Agency received around 226,000 fewer calls this tax season thanks to a single change to its website enabling taxpayers to reset their log-in credentials online. The agency celebrated the improvement following a relatively glitch-free tax season after two challenging years.
Previously, Canadians who found themselves locked out of their CRA accounts had to call the agency for assistance.
Calls to the agency’s call centres overall were down 46 per cent this tax-filing season compared to the previous one, the CRA said. That drop is at least in part due to a suite of digital tools that have made it easier for Canadians to resolve tax-related issues online, without the need to call in for help, Melanie Serjak, assistant commissioner of the assessment, benefit and service branch at the CRA, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.
“We feel like it was just a bit of a smoother ride this year for Canadians,” Ms. Serjak said.
A problem-free tax season was a much-needed win for the CRA, which has come under intense scrutiny from taxpayers and politicians over the past couple of years.
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In September, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced a 100-day plan to improve longstanding call centre delays and service standard woes. The 2026 tax season was widely seen as a test of whether those efforts made a difference.
The CRA contends that they have.
Another recently introduced feature allows taxpayers who owe $1,000 or more in tax debts or benefit overpayments to set up instalment payments online without connecting with an officer.
“That was a bit of our sleeper hit for the season,” Ms. Serjak said, adding that it also helped reduce call volumes. “Canadians really, really took that up.”
Besides more digital self-help options, a simpler tax season also likely contributed to reducing the number of taxpayer calls, she said.
This year, there were few changes for taxpayers. It was a stark contrast with the previous year, which saw Canadians scrambling to understand the implications of the Trudeau government’s last-minute reversal on the capital-gains tax hike. Making matters worse, a CRA systems update also resulted in missing tax slips for scores of tax filers.
Canadians also found themselves struggling to grasp new tax measures during the 2024 tax season, when complex regulations about bare trusts and vacant homes sowed so much confusion that Ottawa eventually suspended, scrapped or rewrote many of the rules.
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Overall, the agency said, on average, it answered more than 75 per cent of unique callers dialling into its phone lines this tax season, above the 70-per-cent target set by the 100-day plan. When wait times were expected to exceed 30 minutes, the CRA’s phone system redirected callers to automated self-service options for certain types of enquiries, the agency said.
But the goal set by the 100-day plan is different from the metric the CRA has traditionally used to measure its performance answering calls. The agency’s official service standard is to pick up the phone within 15 minutes at least 65 per cent of the time.
Using the 15-minute standard, the Office of the Auditor-General found in a report last year that the share of calls the agency was able to answer in a timely manner had collapsed to just five per cent in the month of June 2025 after the agency slashed its call centre workforce.
The CRA has since reversed some of those staff cuts as part of the 100-day plan. It also said it will update its service standard for answering calls to match the new metric set by the plan.
The agency also told The Globe it will introduce a service standard to measure how often it provides correct and complete answers to callers.
Accuracy has long been a sore spot for the CRA. When the Auditor-General tested the quality of answers provided by the agency last year by contacting its call centres, it found that only 17 per cent of general questions about individual tax matters received accurate responses.
“When a Canadian calls us, we want them to trust us,” Ms. Serjak said.
