Good News for Charities in CRA’s Corporate Business Plan
On March 7, 2016, CRA published its report Summary of the Corporate Business Plan 2016-2017 to 2018-2019 (the “Plan”). In her Message at the beginning of the Plan, the Minister of National Revenue reiterates that one of the government’s priorities is “modernizing the rules for charities” and reaffirms the government’s belief that charities and non-profit organizations make a “valuable contribution to society and to public policy”.
Under Section 2 of the Plan on Programs, CRA acknowledges the important role that charities play in “public debate and public policy” and affirms that it will “review and clarify the rules governing a registered charity’s involvement in political activities, in collaboration with the charitable sector.” CRA also commits to “modernize its information technology systems to reduce the administrative burden on charities” with electronic filing of applications for charitable registration (T2050) and the annual Registered Charity Information Return (T3010) being available by November 2017 and November 2018 respectively.
The Plan also sets out certain performance measurements for responding to charities, such as ensuring that 100% of all scheduled audits are completed, providing timely service for charities by answering 80% of all calls in the agent’s queue within two minutes and responding to 80% of simple applications for registration within two months and to regular applications within six months.
CRA Introduces Two New Webpages
On June 10, 2016, CRA introduced two new webpages. The first, Charities Listing request form, allows the public to request on-line an electronic version of data that is available to the public on the Charities Listings webpage. The information will be sent to the applicant by email or mail. While this data will be interesting to researchers, it will also be valuable to organizations and their advisors who wish to know how many and the kind of organizations in a particular category or subcategory have been registered as a charity or revoked as a charity for failure to file, following an audit, voluntarily or for other reasons.
The second page, Request for registered charity information, allows the public to make a request on-line for information about a charity that is publically available but not in the Charities Listings e.g. application for charitable registration, governing documents, notification of registration, letters regarding grounds for revocation, and financial statements. Authorized agents of a charity can also request electronically information about the charity’s file that is not available to the public. CRA will send the information by email, mail, or fax.