Canada Suspends Online Tax System

[Melody]

Just a Head's-up! Canada Revenue says its internal errors, so no worries if you've filed and are worried about your data being compromised. You trust Revenue Canada, don't you? :wideeyed:

Canada Suspends Online Tax System (http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2185319/canada-suspends-online-tax)
Matt Chapman, vnunet.com, 13 Mar 2007

[madattiver]

damn.. I was just about to file online..

I wonder if it will come back online.. and if not.. how many of the sellers of such online tax software will keep selling it..

[Melody]

Good questions to be sure. I doubt it will be offline long unless there's more to it than they're admitting to. The Government has the best of the best at their fingertips if they need to fix something technical.

[fishenthusiast]

Good questions to be sure. I doubt it will be offline long unless there's more to it than they're admitting to. The Government has the best of the best at their fingertips if they need to fix something technical.

Yep, their techs did such a good job when they changed their software this year that the company I work for was assessed with 0 taxable income. They were off by a few 0's, but hey, whos complaining?

Oh yeah, and the conversion screwed with our arrears payments too. Our company had some bad days about 5 years ago and made a big mistake and did not file GST returns for 5 quarters. Needless to say there was a big arrears bill when my current CFO took over. We were making our last few payments when out of the blue $10,000 came in the mail from the government. Why you ask? Because apparently we had over paid our arrears! The truth of the matter was we still owed about $10,000, so in all the government has wiped out whole lotta tax money that we technically owe.

As a side note, my CFO has already mentioned to CCRA on more than one occasion that they have made a mistake and they have yet to do anything about it.

I read recently that the online filing system will be up and running again shortly. I am still waiting for pertinent information, so I haven't filed yet. If Netfile isn't up soon I will probably Telefile. I haven't heard anything about that being down. I hate the paper route, it takes so long to get your return. I am getting my last big refund from my tuition and education credits, and I really want to buy new fishies :yes:!

[Melody]

LOL I said they have them at their fingertips - the good sense to use them is another story. What I mean is that most tech's would love to have a government job - looks good on the resume' & they pay well. If they wanted to bring in one of the best to fix the problem, they could probably do so. I guess I gave them too much credit for having the good sense to do that. :rolleyes:

Its hard to hire a good techy though - most management aren't technically inclined, so they wouldn't know a good one from a bad one. That's why a lot of companies go through recruiters for techies.

That said, they shouldn't be finding these glitches now, when the site is being pounded with filers - it should have been thoroughly tested months ago. I don't expect them to find every little thing in testing because you can't anticipate every scenario, but you're talking about some pretty mainstream requirements in your example. No excuse for that one, I agree.