THE CRA ALREADY HAS ELECTRONIC RECORDS OF NEARLY ALL YOUR INCOME.

In 2008, Revenu Quebec experimented with the use of prefilled tax returns, but abandoned plans to expand the program after only 33 per cent of the test group used the prefilled returns.

In reviewing the Quebec experiment, a 2011 Fraser Institute study concluded that the use of prefilled personal income tax forms “does little to reduce the costs of personal income tax compliance.”

“The idea behind the prefilled personal income tax form is that the government sends the forms to taxpayers with much of their personal tax information already filled in. Individual taxpayers check the information, add whatever is missing, and return the forms to the government,” said Francois Vaillancourt, the study’s editor and an economics professor at the Université de Montréal.

“But since taxpayers with more complex tax returns bear the brunt of compliance costs and governments find it difficult to prepare pre-completed forms for these taxpayers, the opportunities for such programs to reduce total compliance costs are limited.”