CRA’s “E-Pass” System: One Man’s Experience
Always willing to be the ‘guinea pig’, in November 2005 your intrepid reporter applied for an e-pass account on the CRA’s website (http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/menu-e.html), and, true to their word, a letter from CRA arrived at my house in about 4 days.
The letter contained an 8-character jumble, which was my “activation code”, along with a series of instructions (not very complicated). I logged on to the CRA website, accessed the sign-in area through the “my account” link, and entered the activation code.
Thankfully, it appears that this 8-character code is not needed after the first “activation”, as all subsequent inquiries needed only for my password, which is the one I like to use personally for several purposes, so it was nice that I didn’t now have to memorize yet another secret code. Thank goodness!
In any event, I found the website to be quite friendly, and easy to use. The “back button” works to return to the previous page. Of particular interest to me was the area showing the continuity of unused RRSP contributions. In my case, it happened that in 2003, CRA had overlooked one of my RRSP contributions, and, since I had expected to be deducting that contribution on my 2004 return, their assessment of my 2004 return included a nasty surprise - tax on income that should have been covered by an RRSP deduction!
I notified CRA of this error some months ago, and indeed CRA did make a complete fix several weeks later. However, I found it very reassuring indeed to be able to verify my corrected RRSP contribution and carryover history, and compare it to my own records, through the use of this new web access.
Also useful is the area confirming things like instalments paid to date, and the financial institution that you have authorized to receive direct deposits of any refunds (sure - I like to hope for refunds, like anybody else!).
Looking forward to February 2006, it will be possible at that time to use the e-pass system to inspect corporate accounts. That should be a huge benefit for clients - particularly those who make the occasional mistakes with tax instalments going into the wrong account (“RP”, “RC”, “RT”, etc.).