ARCHIVED - Brief Case Studies of Exemplary Practices

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Government of Canada

CCRA Appeals

The Appeals business line of the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA) is an administrative review available to all CCRA clients, which is intended to provide them with a fair and timely redress and dispute resolution process. This process covers disputes related to customs and trade matters, assessments of income tax, excise tax, goods and services tax (GST), and harmonized sales tax (HST), as well as Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Employment Insurance (EI) rulings and assessments. The CCRA is committed to providing Canadians with an impartial and timely review of its decisions, which contributes to the fairness of Canada's tax and customs administration.

The CCRA as a whole has issued a Fairness Pledge, in which it declares that its fairness commitment is based on service to clients that is responsive, consistent and impartial and on the recognition that its clients have specific needs and concerns. As part of the Fairness Pledge, the CCRA is committed to giving its clients accurate and understandable information, advising them of the time it will take to provide the requested service and continually working toward improving response time. The Fairness Pledge is available on the CCRA Internet website.

In February 1999, CCRA issued its 7-Point Plan for Fairness, which included:

• developing a comprehensive guide on the rights of clients;
• publishing standards for the services provided;
• doing a better job communicating with clients;
• better equipping employees to respond to client needs;
• identifying credits, benefits and overpayments for clients;
• providing clients an opportunity to correct any omissions in their past dealings without penalty; and
• doing a better job applying the provisions related to fairness in the laws administered.

In response to Point 1, the CCRA recently published a new declaration on client rights entitled Your Rights, which lays out what clients may expect in their dealings with the CCRA. The new declaration pledges CCRA's commitment to client rights and fair treatment. The declaration is posted in CCRA service areas across Canada. It can also be found on the back of the T1 tax guide and on the CCRA Internet website. Your Rights include:

• fair treatment
• courtesy and consideration
• privacy and confidentiality
• bilingual service
• information
• entitlements
• formal review.

The CCRA's Appeals Branch operates in a non-adversarial nature, with independent decision-making from other CCRA branches, and its staff has the mandate to resolve disputes between clients and the CCRA by fairly and impartially reviewing previous CCRA decisions. Approximately 70,000 objections/appeals/disputes are processed annually, with the bulk of these (50,000) for income tax.

Service Standards in Use

The CCRA is actively encouraging the use of service standards. In 1999, the CCRA established the Agency Service Standards Steering Committee (ASSSC) to coordinate the development of standards and assist all operational branches and regions with the design and implementation of standards for the services that they provide. Within the context of the following CCRA strategic initiatives, the Appeals Branch is developing standards for the services it provides further to:

• Point 2 of the 7-Point Plan for Fairness;
• the CCRA Performance Measurement Framework, based on the Balanced Scorecard approach, uses service standards with the "quality of service" and "stakeholder satisfaction" components to set the expectations against which performance will be measured; and
• CCRA's modern comptrollership initiative, which includes results-based data from the monitoring of service standards.

As a result of the Appeals Renewal Initiative (ARI), launched in 1997, the Appeals Branch committed to have periodic national surveys of a representative sample of its clients to obtain their views about the impartiality, accessibility, openness, timeliness and overall quality of the redress process. The Program Evaluation Division of CCRA's Corporate Affairs Branch was requested to conduct such a national survey in 1998 on client satisfaction with the service provided by four of its five appeals programs, namely, GST/HST, CPP/EI, Customs Adjudication, and Income Tax. Trade Administration was not included in the survey as it was not part of the Branch when the surveys were initiated.

The survey instruments used were mail back (or self-administered) questionnaires, with a different questionnaire developed to reflect the differences between the four different appeals programs surveyed. Two main questions asked respondents to rate their perceptions on different service criteria related to communications about the redress process, accessibility, timeliness, fairness and transparency of the redress process, service from staff, and the knowledge and interpersonal skills of Appeals staff. The results of the survey, released in March 1999:

• provided a measure of client satisfaction;
• served as a baseline for future improvements;
• identified potential areas of improvement or further study; and
• provided information to assist in the review and development of service standards, especially related to timeliness of the Appeals process.

Specifically, the survey found that CCRA clients showed a significant level of dissatisfaction with the time to first contact and about the lack of available information about the dispute or processing timeframes. In response to client feedback as expressed in the survey and in accordance with Point 2 of the 7-Point Plan for Fairness, the Appeals Branch developed the "30-day meaningful first contact" as its first service standard for implementation. This first contact with appellants (or clients) is through a meaningful initial letter to the client within 30 calendar days of the date an objection, dispute or appeal is received by the CCRA. The service standard is intended to increase client satisfaction in the redress process by improving service delivery.

The service standard and the initial letter expedite a dialogue with the client about their objection, appeal or dispute, provide clients with useful information, foster a common understanding of the facts, and establish realistic expectations on what services Appeals can deliver. In short, the 30-day meaningful first contact service standard and initial letter let the Appeals' clients know what kind of service they can expect, when to expect it, and from whom.

The client letter now in use includes some of the following information:

• acknowledgement that the objection, dispute or appeal was received,
• confirmation of the issue(s) in dispute,
• contact name, telephone number and fax number of the Appeals officer,
• offer to provide additional information (transparency),
• the approximate date of the next contact,
• indication of information required or pending, and
• explanation of interest consequences on unpaid amounts (where applicable).

In the pilot offices, informing clients about when they should expect a decision reduced the number of phone calls made by clients to the office. Through the use of the initial letter, clients waited until their indicated due date before calling rather than calling continuously.

The standard was piloted in 12 tax services offices for Income Tax and GST/HST, as well as 6 offices for CPP/EI, all 4 Trade Administration offices, and Customs Adjudications, across Canada. In December 2000, the Appeals Branch announced that it would formally implement this service standard across Canada in April 2001. This involved changing some work processes to facilitate achieving this timeliness standard. This service standard is captured and will be monitored on an on-going basis.

Exemplary Practices

The CCRA Appeals business line has exhibited the following exemplary practices in its approach to developing, implementing, monitoring and using its service standards:

• use of service pledge to publicly commit CCRA Appeals to the 30-day meaningful first contact service standard, and to communicate the standard to clients.
• use of customized initial contact letter to help manage client expectations and improve service. Prior to the pilot, the initial contact letter for some Appeals business lines was a mainframe system-generated letter that was issued under the name of the Director of the local tax services or tax centre office and provided less information to the client. The pilot project introduced a new MS-Word-based letter that provides more information to the client and allows for customization to each individual case.
• extensive consultation with clients and staff during piloting of timeliness service standard and initial letter and sharing of "best practices". The Appeals Branch invested the time and resources to adequately test the service standard and initial letter with pilots in offices across Canada. This allowed for much opportunity for staff and clients to provide feedback and to dialogue on the format and their understanding of the content of the service standard and initial letter and to offer suggestions for improving them. The pilot sites and other Appeals offices were visited and local CCRA staff were consulted to ensure that it was realistic and possible to implement the standard within their operation.
  
  Although the pilot sites were asked to follow a specific approach, they were also encouraged to adapt the proposed approach to suit their local operation and clientele. This fostered flexibility and innovation in how the pilot sites achieved the standard. The "best practices" were shared among pilot offices and they improved the overall approach to achieving the standard.
  
  
• developed the Appeals Branch Service Standard Implementation Kit, with introduction from the Appeals Branch Assistant Commissioner, to facilitate a customized implementation of service standard and initial letter. The Implementation Kit was a useful tool for informing regional staff on guidelines for implementation and how to deal with frequently asked questions. As well, the Kit was designed to ensure maximum consistency among offices, and included examples of the letter for each of the five Appeals business lines.
• did not hesitate to seek advice from outside Appeals Branch. The Appeals Branch consulted with CCRA staff in other branches and outside stakeholders (e.g., the appeals Advisory Committee) to discuss its approach and to learn from the experience and expertise of others.
• establishment of mechanism to provide redress to clients when the service standard is not met. A complaint system was established to serve as a redress mechanism for the 30-day meaningful first contact service standard to deal with any expression of dissatisfaction from clients. Using the information from tracking client complaints is an essential component of the service standards monitoring strategy and a valuable indicator of client satisfaction with the service.
• commitment by a quasi-judicial or administrative review unit to carry out client satisfaction surveys on a regular basis. The CCRA Appeals Branch is committed to carrying out surveys of its clients, including those who had not received favourable decisions, even though evidence suggests that the 'outcome' of the decision may be more of a factor in client satisfaction than the 'service' surrounding the decision. Working within this context, the first surveys of the various appeals programs were carried out in 1998 for clients of four appeals programs and resulted in a number of changes in service delivery and the development and implementation of the first service standard for the Appeals business line. A second set of surveys is planned for 2002-03 to see whether satisfaction has increased.

Lessons Learned

Willingness of Appellants to Provide Feedback

1. In an appeals environment, clients (i.e., appellants) might not receive favourable decisions or outcomes and might be predisposed to be dissatisfied with the government. Nonetheless, surveying these appellants still provides useful information on the nature of the communication, accessibility, timeliness, fairness and transparency, service from the staff, and the knowledge and interpersonal of Appeals staff.

   Appellants' Expectations

2. Appellants want and expect a favourable decision. But they also expect a well reasoned and timely decision, and to be informed on when they can expect the decision to be made on their case, irrespective of the outcome. Appellants are entitled to know when to expect a decision.

   Consulting with Staff

3. In determining service standards and how to deal with the difficulties of implementation, consulting with both Appeals and non-Appeals staff in headquarters and especially the regions, as well as with clients, contributes to improving service.

Contact

For more information on the services provided by the CCRA Appeals business line, please contact:

Nathalie Dumais
Manager
Client Consultation and Services Section
Appeals Branch
Canada Customs and Revenue Agency
22^nd Floor
25 Nicholas Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0L5
Tel  (613) 952-7400
Fax  (613) 952-0197
e-mail  nathalie.dumais@ccra-adrc.gc.ca

 

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