Nathalie: Creating solutions for Northern Residents

Tax benefits and deductions can be challenging. This rings particularly true for residents in Canada's northern regions. Nathalie, Manager of the Validation Policies and Procedures section in the Collections and Verification Branch of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), has been working to improve the Northern Residents Deductions (NRD) since 2015.

The NRD includes two types of deductions: residency and travel. These deductions help northern residents by recognizing the challenges they face, including a higher cost of living, environmental hardships, and limited access to services.

Residents can claim the travel deduction for trips for personal or medical reasons. To do so, they must submit the lowest return airfare at the time of the trip. This amount is for the lowest cost round trip flight between the airport closest to their home and the nearest designated city.  People often forget to get this amount before their trip.

It can also be challenging to find the lowest return airfare after a trip. Airlines and airports often no longer advertise these amounts once a trip is completed. Residents need this amount to calculate their claim. Also, when a northern resident can not support their travel claim, the CRA is unable to verify and accept the deduction.

To address these concerns, Nathalie and her team launched a pilot project called the Simplified Northern Residents Travel Deduction (SNRTD) in February 2023. The pilot project uses tables that display the lowest airfare amounts of more than 135 eligible airports in the prescribed zones. Northern residents can access these tables at any time and use the amount to calculate their travel deduction claims.

During the summer of 2023, Nathalie and her teammates held three consultation sessions in the North to get feedback on the SNRTD pilot. This was done in addition to an online questionnaire and mailbox.

"Due to the different challenges northern residents face, we felt we should go to the North to give northern residents more of a voice." Working on this file, Nathalie and her team had only read about the issues northern communities face. "We couldn't do virtual sessions only due to some of the challenges with internet access in the North."

Meeting with people in person was an eye-opening experience. They saw issues firsthand, like unreliable internet service and high grocery costs. Nathalie shared, "It's one thing to read about the high food costs; it's another to see those prices with our own eyes." This experience gave them a new perspective on how their work affects northern residents.

Traveling to the territories in person helped Nathalie and her team understand the importance of the SNRTD. They heard people's concerns that the airfare amounts in the tables were too low and still somewhat difficult to claim.

As they talked with people in northern communities, they noticed another accessibility issue. English and French were not always people's first languages. This made the material on the NRD more difficult to understand for a lot of residents.

In response, a factsheet was created and translated into two different dialects of Inuktitut, allowing more people to access this important information. The team aims to translate the factsheet into more languages and dialects going forward to better serve northern residents.

The new perspectives Nathalie and her team gained from their trips and the concerns they heard helped shape the final SNRTD consultation report. A solution that came out of the consultations was to update the tables more often. Their goal is to continue addressing concerns and to make life a little bit easier for northern residents.