Some Canadians who repaid pandemic benefits are seeing their tax refund withheld
CBC
Some Canadians who have repaid a pandemic benefit they received by mistake are still seeing their tax refunds withheld by the government.
The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has resumed efforts to recover the money through a process it calls "offsetting," which means that it automatically uses money from tax refunds and some benefits to settle a person's debt with the government.
But Ottawa's Sarah Dykeman said she repaid what she owed and still had her tax refund held back last year.
"I spent the next year trying to figure out how to get my tax refund back," she said.
Dykeman, who was a supply teacher at the time, said she applied for employment insurance (EI) once public health measures came into effect. But she said she began receiving payments from both EI and the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).
"I wasn't clear on whether [I was supposed to get] CERB or if it was normal EI," she said. "I ended up panicking and cancelling my claim because I didn't want to have to repay even more if it turned out later that they shouldn't have paid me in the first place."
Dykeman said she received a notice to repay last year but found the instructions on where to make the payment confusing.
"It was like I just sent $2,000 into the ether and I have no idea if it got where it needed to," she said.
After contacting both the CRA and Service Canada — the department responsible for administering EI — Dykeman finally got her tax refund reimbursed.
But she said the process was onerous.
"If English wasn't my first language, I would have been snookered. I don't know how I would have gotten it resolved," she said.
According to Canada's Taxpayers' Ombudsperson, Dykeman is not alone. François Boileau told CBC that his office has heard from nearly two dozen Canadians with similar complaints, but he suspects there are even more having similar issues.
Boileau said that at first glance these issues are stem from a lack of communication between Service Canada and the CRA.
"It looks like the left hand doesn't talk to the right hand," he said.