If analyzed in relation to 11 “similar” tax administrations, the agency performed better than average for about half of the study indicators and worse for the other half.
“In most cases, Canada is never far behind the average, usually outperforming or outperforming countries,” said Yves Giroux.
The bureau examined 21 indicators from the 2020 results of the International Survey on Revenue Administration (ISORA).  ISORA is administered every two years and collects data for the previous two financial years from more than 150 national or federal tax administrations.
The indicators are grouped into four sections: collection costs, payment compliance, audit performance and organizational indicators.
Canada “significantly” outperformed competitors in terms of the value of value added tax (VAT) estimates and the number of audits performed per auditor.
“This is to be expected since the CRA carries out a large volume of relatively less complex VAT controls,” Giroux said.
Canada, on the other hand, had a “relatively poor performance” on corporate income tax and VAT debt.  The report said that this rate could be indicative of OAPI’s preference not to “aggressively” pursue certain taxpayers.
Canada has the worst performance in terms of cost recovery ratios for total revenue, second only to Germany.  The PBO warns that collection cost ratios “must be interpreted with caution”.
“An underfunded tax administration is likely to perform well (as it collects revenue from self-compliant taxpayers), but it may lose a lot of potential revenue because it lacks strong compliance mechanisms,” the report said.
The PBO said that it is important to understand the results of OAPI, given the recent commitments to improve its services from the 2016 budget.
More than $ 3 billion has been committed between fiscal years 2016-17 and 2025-26 for a variety of initiatives, with nearly $ 2 billion being targeted specifically for compliance activities.
“While the PBO prepared cost estimates for some of these proposals and found that there was a positive return on this investment, the most recent cost estimates released during the last election campaign warned that, given the significant increase in resources received by CRA in “Over the last decade, it has not been clear that it could continue to absorb new cash inflows effectively,” the report said.
Giroux recommends that as future governments consider additional funding for the agency, all MEPs should “pay attention” to its performance.
CTVNews.ca contacted the CRA for a statement on the report, but received no response at the time of publication.