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Taxpayers’ Ombudsperson François Boileau is pushing for simplified, automated tax filing as his office faces its highest number of complaints in three years.
Boileau says his office saw a 27 per cent jump in complaints last year, driven mainly by Canadians upset with Canada Revenue Agency service delays.
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He says the 100-day improvement plan the federal government introduced last fall lit a fire under CRA bureaucrats and helped to boost service this past tax season, but now he wants to see more regular reporting from the agency on how it’s living up to expectations.
The watchdog also says the CRA could make better use of AI chatbots to answer Canadians’ questions online.
While Boileau says he’d like to see Ottawa’s automatic tax filing program expanded out from an early CRA pilot, he also tells reporters the Income Tax Act is “completely nuts” and may need to be simplified before more Canadians can access automatic filing.
Ottawa says it is planning to offer pre-filled tax returns to one million Canadians starting next year, and to scale that up to 5.5 million taxpayers by 2029.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 16, 2026.
