Friday, March 13, 2009

CCRA's Telefile Review

Do I recommend CCRA's Telefile?
The short answer - HEL$ NO!!!

Let me start by saying it is crap. There!

So this year I decide to do my and my wifes Income Tax returns the old school pen and form method. Finished it all up last night (Whoo Hooo - Refund Time!)
I was reading on CCRA's website (SEE HERE) that they have a Telefile service that allows you to phone in your tax return. They talk it up saying how easy it is and simple to correct mistakes yada yada.

Ok so I phone the #, enter my SIN# and Access Code. Get a message - We are sorry you can not Telefile...Then they tell me to phone CCRA Customer Service. Well what the hell....Its Thurs night, nothing on TV, might as well waste my time talking to some CCRA rep. Phoned them...The guy was very helpful...He told me that they have tons of problems with the Telefile access codes not working.....ummm ok great start....can you fix it at least?? Oh sure he says....Long story short 15 minutes later Telefile is now supposed to work for me....Excellent 30 minutes later I am now at square one again.

Phone Telefile back and now I can file - Yippiee (ya right!). Please enter every f'in box code off every f'in Schedule.....Lets just say that I got 20 minutes into the Telefile call (honestly it was 20 minutes) and by this time I finished the Federal Schedule and was onto the Provincial Schedule...Then I screwed up an amount in the 342nd question they asked me and guess what - I went to far ahead to reverse this mix up!!! God Dammit - I typed in about 30,000 keys in 20 minutes and I make one simple mistake and I am Fuc#ed??? Are you kidding me??? Guess what my option is? Hang up, phone back, start from Square One.

The Teleservice is a real piece of work!!!! Long story short - got my stamps ready and off in the mail the forms go....Isnt this how you had to do it in 1920!!!
Thanks for wasting an hour of my time with your crappy free services CCRA - Do I get a tax credit for this???

PS - I am fully aware that I could use Quicktax and Netfile....But maybe CCRA could upgrade their FREE options. Wouldn't that be a refreshing change. Good luck....maybe by 2031's Tax Return I will get my wish (I should be Prime Minister by then so I can pass some laws!)

5 comments:

Jen said...

What you need to do is get together with some other people and all buy QuickTax together. It costs about $20 and you can file at least 8 returns (depending on the level you buy) so it works out to $2.50 a file, which isn't bad. You just enter the numbers off your T4's and whatever else, check it over, then click a button and it's gone. About 2 weeks later (the time it takes your papers to get there in the mail) your refund is direct deposited into your bank account. No fuss, no muss, and relatively inexpensive.

3treescreations@gmail.com said...

Jenny is a smarty pants!

Derek said...

Jennie U are a GENIUS!!! Now you need to find me 8 friends :-)

3treescreations@gmail.com said...

(I meant JennIE) whoopsies

Anonymous said...

Mom/Lynne said; Well telefile sure sounds like fun, not......Perhaps snail mail and the good old pencil, form and stamp version of completing income tax, will once again be trendy, with all the viruses, scams, hackers, etc. out there, trying every last ditch attempt to empty our bank accounts. And please note that the post office will want you to put 2 stamps on your income tax form when you mail it. But refuse to that. They have to forward it to the gov't. even without any postage. I'm so blessed to have a brilliant husband that does all our calculations for both of us. One of these I have to learn how to complete all the complicated forms, which confuse the daylights out of me.