I had a minor disagreement with the Canadian Revenue Agency: they wanted me to file a tax return for 2017, I wanted to know that I hadn’t filed a tax return for 2017. It was a simple communications prob – WHAT‽
The CRA had not received a tax return from me for the year 2017, that’s what. My father, my accountant had filled one out (or had made a wild guess at how much tax I owed that year – maybe he has a dartboard hidden in his home office that he uses for just such a purpose); he must have forgotten to send it. Alzheimer’s Disease will do that to you.
No harm done: the completed return was still on his computer, so I printed off a copy and sent it o…ut. Unfortunately, I could no longer trust him to do my returns, so, at the tender age of 59, I had to fill out my own tax return for the first time.
* sniff * His little boy was growing up.
I spent an hour filling out a paper form…in pencil, a medium I hadn’t used since I was six years old. By the end, I wasn’t sure I had made much progress; then, I was told I could file online through H&R Block for free, so I tried that.
Worked like a charm (because I didn’t want to be led away in bracelets). I hit send, relieved that I had been able to do my taxes on my own. Today, I am a fountain pen! My relief was short-lived, however (appoximately 1.37 seconds), because I received an error message: the personal information on my return was not the same as the personal information the CRA had on record. Try again.
I tried again. With the same result. I was tempted to try again, but I remembered the bit of old folk wisdom about trying the same thing expecting a different result. Oh, and the web site informed me that it would lock me out of the account after five failed attempts. They can really focus the mind, those error messages.
The site suggested that if I couldn’t fix the problem, I should call the CRA and work it out with them. Okay. I am marginally more comfortable on the phone than I am filling out a tax return. The first thing I got was a menu of options. The second thing I got was a message that said, “Due to current circumstances, you may experience longer than normal wait times.” Since I didn’t know what normal wait times were, I was not daunted.
This was followed by the message: “This call, including wait time, may be monitored…” I can understand why they would monitor the call – quality control has always been a watchword of my life – I live, eat and excrete quality control – but the wait time? Is my breathing really that important to the government? Did they think I would accidentally admit to committing wire fraud to an accomplice while I was on hold? Did the silence thin out in places, which could cause people to forget they were on hold and leave the line open for hours? Okay, that last one was a bit fanciful: who would stay on the phone for hours just to talk to a CRA representative?
A song started playing, something vaguely pleasant with strings. I waited a minute. Two minutes. Five minutes. It became apparent that the song was actually only 20 or 30 seconds, played on a loop. When I had had enough of it, I put the phone on speaker and took it to my room to try and do some work.
An hour later, thoroughly sick of the song but still hopeful of being connected, I took the phone up to the kitchen and had some dinner.
As I was eating, the song seemed to fade out. Was this it? Was I finally going to get through to a CRA rep? Hope springs eternal. Hope is invariably thwarted eternal. The common wisdom doesn’t tell you that part. The song snippet just looped back to the beginning.
I finished dinner and went back to my computer. Soon after, I had to go to the bathroom. Seriously had to go to the bathroom, like, could not ignore the need to go to the bathroom seriously. My choice was stark: risk having the rep come on the line while I was in the bathroom, or peeing in a bottle in my room…and risk having somebody come on the line while I was doing that. As it happened, I didn’t have an empty bottle close to hand, so that choice was easy enough to make.
As I continued to work, in addition to the music, my phone started making random noises. For instance, a phantom busy signal faded in, fuzzily rang for a bit, and faded out. Then, there were two beeps. They weren’t typical phone beeps – I didn’t recognize the sound. An attempt by aliens to submit their tax forms? Maybe they were why the CRA monitored calls while you were waiting!
Aaaaaaaaanyway, two and a half hours after I initiated the call, I got through to a CRA rep. It took ten minutes of me giving her my personal information before she believed I was who I claimed to be. Once that had been established, it took her 30 seconds to figure out that the birth date they had on file for me was wrong. The woman changed it in the CRA database.
The confetti that sprang up on my computer when I hung up and tried to file my return – successfully – mocked me.