Don Cayo: In my opinion

Fixes: Complaints of questionable treatment haven’t entirely gone away, but they’re now just an occasional drip

Tax regulations and enforcement techniques are lighter than just a few years ago, and an unlikely pair of British Columbians have helped to make this so.

Develop new tools ... streamline procedures ... work closely with ... be ready to implement ... engage stakeholders ...

There are more squishy verbs than concrete ones — although a few are specific — in the sixpoint, two-year red tape reduction plan that National Revenue Minister Kerry-Lynne Findlay unveiled Friday in Vancouver.

It is not the first time a government has set it sights — or, at least, has said it’s setting its sights — on bureaucratic obfuscation. The question this time is, will it make a difference? Will lofty sentiments and goals make the nation’s taxman, the Canada Revenue Agency, easier if not to love, then at least to distrust and fear less intensely.

The answer is, of course, speculative. But it might turn out to be Yes.

Certainly, CRA has changed, mostly for the better, in the decade-plus this column has probed its activities.

I cut my teeth as a Vancouver Sun columnist with exposes of what I called taxpayer abuse, first at the hands of the provincial revenue department, then, after B.C. began cleaning up its tax collection act under former revenue minister Rick Thorpe, the CRA.

There was never quite a flood, but certainly a steady trickle of mostly verifiable complaints about questionable treatment at the hands of CRA — wrong or inconsistent advice, no easy or accurate information, stupidity or even what seemed like malice in the conduct of some staff.

Such complaints haven’t entirely gone away, but they’re now just an occasional drip. And when I refer people, as I often do, to the Taxpayers Ombudsman office before deciding whether to write about their case, often as not I never hear back, or they write to say the issue has been resolved.

My cautious optimism on this next step — making it easier for business people to know what they have to know and do what they have to do to satisfy tax law — isn’t just shared, it’s exceeded by several notches of enthusiasm by two unlikely allies in the quest for better tax administration. One is former minister Thorpe, who you’d expect to applaud as he now chairs CRA’s board. The other is Laura Jones, executive vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, who I first came to know as a feisty, effective foe of errant tax collectors.

Jones credits the B.C. model crafted by Thorpe — a taxpayer fairness code with real teeth, and a dramatic change in the culture of the revenue department to make it more client-friendly — with setting the course for the changes at CRA, which adopted its Taxpayer Bill of Rights just a few months later.

And it was Thorpe’s success in turning around the provincial department that got him named to the CRA board four years ago and elevated to chair two years ago.

Jones said these formal statements of rights and policies were huge factors in the improvements she has seen both provincially and federally — particularly the provision that taxpayers can get information in writing and the department will stand by it even if turns out to be wrong.

Thorpe said it was also essential to get endorsement from the top — he lauds Findlay’s commitment — so that staff, who know where the bottlenecks and problems are, will have the confidence to speak up.

The new red tape reduction plan deals with processes, not tax policies, which remain the bailiwick of the Department of Finance. It covers improvement to telephone service ( which rings busy two-thirds of the time now), more accessible and more understandable information, simpler filing requirements, better online services, better coordination with other government departments, and improvements to the audit experience — although I wouldn’t expect that last one to ever be pleasant.

“This isn’t the kind of stuff that grabs headlines,” Jones said. “But it’s stuff that matters to business.”

Thorpe noted that at least one planned improvement — adding an online chat service to provide advice — will have more potential benefits that might seem obvious.

“Chat advice is in writing,” he said. “And if we put it in writing, we stand by it.”