The office politics would kill me

Just received a letter from CRA with tips to assist with accurate adjustments for clients in the future

Tip # 1) If two T1 Adjustment Request forms are submitted for separate taxpayers, and the adjustments relate to each other, please provide an explanation and identify the related taxpayer and tax year in the other details and explanations area of the form. The usefulness of one cover letter for both taxpayers is limited in that the cover letter will remain with only one of the requests. An alternative is to attach a cover letter to each T1 ADJ though this is not necessary.

My Comment: It was indicated in the body of the letter that cover letters are NOT read and in fact, are completely ignored in the mail room. I was informed that the cover letter goes with what ever the first item under it is. The rest of the items are sorted and sent to a variety of departments. See previous post for what to say on EACH T1ADJ if the requests are related.

Tip # 2) A Tax Summary of a return will generally be referred to the T1 Processing area to determine if it was intended as an original return. If it's determined it has already been filed, then it's forwarded to the Individual and Benefit Returns division. This could result in request for related taxpayers being referred through different areas. You may want to not include tax summaries when requesting adjustments. The T1 ADJ forms are sufficient on their own provided the necessary adjustments are identified, explanations are provided and the appropriate supporting documentation is provided.

My Comment: The reason I put a "Before" and "After" snapshot/summary with the adjustment (and it's stapled to the back of the adjustment, and referenced in the Explanation, is to attempt to engage the adjuster in checking their work. Obviously that backfired.

Tip # 3) Where one taxpayer is dealing with multiple areas of CRA and the issues are not related, it is sometimes more effective to respond directly to each area for each issue that you are addressing. Providing all information to only one of the areas may cause delays in getting information to the areas that need information.

My Comment. This was specific to one client where T1 Processing Review had requested additional information. Because the client came in with more information than what was originally requested, and it became a Voluntary Disclosure at that point, I made arrangements with VD to send the information to them. Now I'm being accused of being the problem. Apparently I should have sent the information to two place.

It's my observation from this experience that CRA management can choose to make a case as to why it's our fault, not theirs and maybe even sell themselves on the idea that they are right.

Even when it definitely was CRA's fault, they still won't believe it's their system that's at fault. Instead, and this is very sad, they chose to blame an employee for an error, instead of the system for not allowing for packages to be dealt with as a package. In that case, which involved a couple and spousal transfers, it was very obvious to me that even though the employee processed both returns on the same day, the spouses may have been processed by the same person on the same day, but I doubt they were processed together, or the employee would have caught their error.  This was in spite of a line by line breakdown of which lines on each return should change. It's obvious they aren't instructed to cross check the results anticipated by the client, as is evidenced by me being instructed not to send in summaries of before and after as that just confuses them.

I'm sure glad I don't work at CRA. Reminder to self, could have had a nice pension if you'd worked there, but the office politics evidenced by this letter which blames everyone but themselves, no thanks. They can keep their big fat salaries and their pensions. I'd rather make less, work from home, and choose my clients carefully, and cross check my work. Of course, none of us can choose not to work with CRA to help those clients.  So we'll keep re-submitting those T1ADJ's until they finally get it right or drop dead trying.