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Over half a million lower-income individuals will receive a SimpleFile invitation this summer (www.canada.ca)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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his July, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) expanded its SimpleFile services (phone, digital, and paper) to invite more than 500,000 eligible lower-income individuals to file their return and potentially gain access to important benefit and credit payments.

This automatic tax filing national pilot targets individuals who have never filed a tax return or who have a gap in their filing history, and builds upon the success of small-scale SimpleFile pilots previously undertaken by the CRA.

In early 2024, the CRA invited more than 1.5 million individuals with a lower income or a fixed income and who are in a simple tax situation that remains unchanged from year to year to use SimpleFile by Phone, double the number from the previous year. To date, more than 90% of the invitees have filed their tax return using a variety of filing methods the CRA offers.

SimpleFile is a key Budget 2024 commitment and the CRA is on track to further increase the number of invitations to two million for tax season 2025.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

From my quick search, SimpleFile appears to be a CRA technology as opposed to one leased from an external corporation - so, yay that bit is done within-house. The program focuses on disadvantaged individuals and essentially competes with (predatory) commercial tax preparation services. I don't really mean this as a partisan comment, but this is what good government looks like in my eyes - working for the people to grow the country in a good direction. It sounds very effective too

[–] Troz 2 points 3 months ago

Yeah, it really is odd that so many people have to use a commercial third party for taxes when the vast majority of people have very simple situations.