Some Canadians could be waiting twice as long for CRA to process tax return
Canadians who made changes to their tax returns could be waiting twice as long this season for it to be processed by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).
On Thursday, the Office of the Taxpayers’ Ombudsperson announced that it is conducting an examination into delays Canadians are experiencing when the CRA determines that a T1 adjustment is complex.
“We opened this examination because we have been receiving a consistently high level of complaints about delays in processing T1 adjustment requests,” reads a news release.
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There are different options for taxpayers who want to tweak an income tax return. Routine adjustments requested through “Change my return” in Canadians’ CRA accounts or through their tax software should meet the agency’s service standard of issuing a notice of reassessment or a letter of explanation within two weeks of receiving the request. The service standard for typical changes made by phone or mail is eight weeks.
According to the watchdog, the CRA can determine a request is complex when it needs more information or has to review it. In these cases, the service standard is much longer, taking 20 weeks.
However, this tax season, the Office of the Taxpayers’ Ombudsperson found that the delays are even longer. Although the service standard for complex requests is 20 weeks, as of May 14, 2026, the agency has been taking double the time to process tax return changes, taking up to 47 weeks.
“We understand that the CRA is under tremendous pressure to deliver its services to the public. But T1 adjustments affect many taxpayers, and delays can cause real issues for those who are seeking redress,” stated Taxpayers’ Ombudsperson François Boileau.
“The delays we have been seeing with complex T1 adjustment requests touch on several rights under the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. With a systemic examination, we are hoping to get to the root causes of why the CRA is not currently meeting its service standard.”
In addition to conducting a systemic examination, the watchdog also sent a service improvement request to the agency. It asked it to change the T1 adjustment request web page to encourage taxpayers to file their changes online rather than by printing and mailing the web form as suggested on the website, so that requests can be processed more quickly.
The watchdog says that based on the examination’s findings, Boileau may make recommendations on solutions to lessen CRA service delays.
Check out the watchdog’s full news release.
A recent report from a think tank shared how long families would have to work to pay off their taxes up front.