CRA’s Dedicated Telephone Service for income tax service providers

The CRA has asked us to remind our members of their Dedicated Telephone Service (DTS) for small and medium-sized income tax service providers. The service connects income tax professionals with experienced CRA officers from the Income Tax Rulings Directorate who can help practitioners with their interpretative issues related to the Income Tax Act. Any income tax service provider can register and benefit from the service, provided they do not belong to a firm with greater than 50 partners.

The DTS currently has 6,700 income tax practitioners registered. According to a recent survey conducted by the CRA, approximately 68 per cent of the registrants are Chartered Professional Accountants. In addition, 93 per cent of survey respondents indicated they are satisfied with the DTS and would recommend it to a colleague. The survey results confirm that the DTS has been well-received by small and medium-sized practitioners and is helping them find answers to their interpretive income tax enquiries.

Note that we have received a number of member suggestions that CRA establish a similar service to address account-specific client issues, which are administrative in nature and not part of the DTS’s mandate. Such a service would allow practitioners to bypass the general phone lines for issues that can’t be resolved online. We have informed the CRA of our members’ interest in such a service on several occasions.

For further information, we encourage you to visit the CRA’s DTS web page.