A record number of Canadian taxpayers are having to correct the CRA’s work.
What happened: The number of objections to assessments made by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has nearly doubled since before the pandemic, according to data reported by The Globe & Mail.
Taxpayers can file objections when they believe the CRA has made an error in an assessment or decision — more than 128,000 were filed in 2024-25, up from 66,000 in 2019-20.
Why it’s happening: The federal government has upped the CRA’s budget to battle tax avoidance in recent years. That’s leading to more audits and, as a result, more objections.
Why it matters: 63% of objections were either fully or partially successful in the past year, indicating that more often than not the CRA got it at least partially wrong. That sort of error rate doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the agency’s auditing chops.
Once an objection is filed, the review process can drag on for many months — it took the agency more than a year to resolve 29% of medium-complexity disputes last year.
Zoom out: The CRA’s headcount has fallen from more than 59,000 staff at its peak in 2023 to around 52,499 in 2025 — the union representing CRA workers says that shrinkage is to blame for performance problems at the agency, including the fact that it’s been virtually impossible to get someone on the phone.