On July 15, CRA made it much more difficult for tax professionals, like ourselves, to be authorized to gain access to new client’s CRA information so we can help them.
For most of our existing clients, we already have CRA access to their account because they previously authorized us. They are not affected by this new change at CRA.
Only new clients to our business will be impacted. And those that turn 17 or 18 and are filing a tax return for the first time.
New Clients
If you are in the Ste Anne area and would like us to look after your 2025 taxes next February to June (or previous years too if you have not filed), please contact us now or very soon, so we can work on getting authorized by you to access your CRA information. Waiting till next tax season may be more frustrating for us and you. And it may take longer to process your taxes. Or your taxes may be filed with incomplete information and will be difficult to correct.
Your CRA Info
Why is it important for us to view your CRA information? We can more accurately file your tax returns if we can see the information CRA has.
We often find missing tax slips that you did not receive or were not able to get online or were unaware of. We can access information about past tax returns including any reassessments that CRA may have processed that you were not notified about.
We can look for RRSP contributions that you did not claim in the past 10 years. We can confirm your current RRSP and TFSA contribution room. We can see the balance of your RRSP Homebuyer plan.
We can confirm what your quarterly instalment payments will be for September 15 and December 15 2025, if CRA requests you to pay some of your 2025 income taxes ahead of time. If you do not pay them, CRA will likely add interest to any unpaid required instalments.
There are so many clients that at one time could access their CRA My Account but now cannot access: they may have forgotten their user ID and/or password or have been locked out by CRA after several attempts. And in the past many months, it has become much more difficult to contact CRA by phone to get your CRA credentials up to date again.
More and more, clients are relying on tax professionals like us to get their CRA info: missing Notice of Assessments (cannot find or never received) and/or Proof of Income Statements needed for Rent Assist or the Hearing Aid Grant.
They ask us to find out their TFSA room. Sometimes lenders ask for tax info for the past few years, and we can access that information for our clients who need this for new loans. There are many reasons why our clients call us for help when they need some CRA information and cannot access it themselves.
How to get access to your CRA My Account
You can check out CRA’s website on how to get access (or get access again). There are some new ways including using your phone to take a picture with your government ID.
And you may be able to get access via your online banking application.
Regardless of how you get access (or get access again), you need to know your total income, line 15000, of your most recent tax return. CRA will ask for that information. But if you did not get your Notice of Assessment by mail, or could not access online, how will you get this info? It’s quite the problem with CRA (and us).
And when you call the CRA general inquiries phone line, it is now almost impossible to get through to an agent, and it will be very difficult to get help from CRA.
Review your CRA information
For most taxpayers, they may only access their CRA online once a year to check out their Notice of Assessment once their taxes are filed. So, you may not remember your sign-on credentials that you only use once a year. Make sure you keep the user ID and password in a safe place (like a password manager) so you can obtain that info when you need it. It’s good to access CRA online a few times a year to make sure you still know how to access your CRA My Account for when you need it.
Once you are in, check the mail to see if you missed any notices that CRA issued. Check your statement of account, is your balance at zero or what you expect it to be if you still have an amount owing?
CRA Increased Security
CRA has made these changes to tighten the security and to ensure there is less fraud. Yes, a few bad apples really have spoiled the basket for the rest of us tax professionals. We hope that for most of our new clients, we will be able to get their authorization easily and quickly to be able to view their tax information. For those we cannot get access, we will need to file tax returns will less than complete information. It will be like filing tax returns decades ago. I will feel like I have blinders on and cannot see the whole picture. There will be many more corrections to make after tax season for our new clients. Not a good impression.
Anni Markmann is a Personal Income Tax Professional; living, working, and volunteering in our community. Contact Ste Anne Tax Service at 204.422.6631 or 36 Dawson Road in Ste Anne (near Clearview Co-op gas & convenience store) or Info@SteAnneTaxService.ca