Prepared for the:
Public Affairs Branch
Canada Revenue Agency
FINAL REPORT
March 2007
POR# 329-06
Contract # 4655883060
Prepared by:
Western Opinion Research
Le rapport complet en français sera fourni sur demande.
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Executive Summary
Summary of Objectives and Method
There were two primary objectives for this study. The first was to determine the evolution of the My Business Account (MyBA) website, focusing on the design of a Welcome page architecture and the development of future services to be offered to the site's users. The second objective was to investigate opinion towards portal services and user authentication between the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) website and various federal, provincial and municipal websites. To provide context for these main objectives, the research gathered opinions towards current contact with the CRA, including present use of its website.
Qualitative research, using focus groups, was conducted to meet these objectives. Ten groups were conducted with two each in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver between February 5 and 13, 2007. Participants were lead through a discussion by a moderator and were encouraged to provide open-ended and detailed responses to questions that allow for probing of inner thoughts and motivations. One group in each city was conducted with Owners/Financial Employees of businesses and the other group was with Third Party accountants, bookkeepers and external payroll administrators. During the groups, participants were shown three sample MyBA Welcome page designs and asked to provide comments on each and indicate which design they preferred. These sample web pages are referred to as Welcome 4/5, Welcome 6 and Welcome 7 in this report (pictures are included in Appendices A-D in this report). Participants also prioritized MyBA services to be developed in the future (see Appendix E and Appendix F for more information).
Unless otherwise specified, it is assumed that comments found in the report equally represent Owners/Financial Employees and Third Parties.
Reasons to Contact the CRA
Participants said they contact the CRA to get detailed account information. This is most often done when they notice discrepancies in their statements, need to clarify misunderstandings, trace interim payments or were being reassessed or audited. The most common misunderstanding was the CRA allocating payments between periods in a way not expected by participants. Sometimes participants notice errors in their assessments, which require communications with the CRA, however, participants acknowledge that these errors are occurring less frequently, and that the CRA is improving on how it handles them. Participants also call the CRA to transfer payments between GST/HST, Corporate Income Tax and Payroll accounts. Another common reason to call the CRA is to get general tax information or interpretations and guidance on taxes.
Contact with the CRA occurs irregularly. Frequency of contact also did not fit a defined pattern. Some Owners only contact the CRA once or twice a year, whereas some Third Parties contact CRA once or twice a day to answer questions for different clients.
Method of Contact and Satisfaction
Phone was the most common method to contact the CRA. Participants were somewhat satisfied with this method of contact, though they did express frustration with the time and difficulty involved, as well as the reliability of information.
The other main form of contact was the Internet. It was not uncommon to hear that there was a desire to increase Internet use and decrease the amount of calls to the CRA. It was felt that Internet contact would be faster and require less effort, thus mitigating the frustrations experienced with the phone. Participants had positive feelings towards downloading forms, filing returns (NETFILE), looking up regulations, registering businesses and making use of the payroll calculator. Opinions about user-friendliness of the site were mixed - some say that it was quite easy to navigate and others said that it was difficult to use.
My Business Account – Usage, Awareness, Benefits and Disadvantages
Awareness of MyBA was very low. There were a few participants that knew about and used the service. These participants indicated they used it for very basic information and functions like viewing account information and filing online.
Participants said the advantages of MyBA were saving time and accessing information when and where they want, and participants viewed these as very significant benefits to using MyBA. Third Parties could improve client service by accessing information faster. Participants also felt that time, and to a lesser extent money, could be saved if the most recent forms are available online. Participants also liked the idea of completing forms directly online – being taken through an algorithm to automatically fill-in forms online could virtually eliminate mistakes.
There were some perceived concerns associated with MyBA. Privacy and security were the most significant. Some participants said doing too much online would require changing their systems and processes and this would take time and cost money. Another concern was being able to correct mistakes made when entering data. Also, some Third Parties indicated they were very paper oriented, so they wanted to be assured they could print every transaction and statement that they viewed. Some participants were concerned about how the CRA's website is organized – will they be able to find their way to MyBA, and would it be user friendly? As long as the CRA could reassure users about these perceived concerns, they would not likely have a strong impact on potential use of the site.
Another disadvantage was third party access and what representatives or employees of the business could do on behalf of the owner/shareholder. Participants were not concerned only about who would be able to access information, but what they could potentially do on the account. Unlike other perceived concerns, permissions/authorizations could become a complex issue for MyBA. Some Owners/Financial Employees felt it might be necessary for them to go through every service individually and decide who could view it and who could make changes to it. Even Third Parties were concerned about their clients (e.g. small business owners) being able to change information and possibly do something that could create an issue with the account.
Opinions of My Business Account Welcome Pages
Welcome 4/5 (Welcome 4 is for Owners and Welcome 5 is for Employees and Third Parties), which is the Welcome page currently used in MyBA was the preferred option. Participants indicated that the page was well laid-out and that it presented all the relevant information in one place. It presented a good overview of the e-services offered on MyBA. There were some concerns from a few participants – like some saying the page was too cluttered, but overall, this was not a very serious concern. However, if MyBA significantly expanded its service offerings, participants indicated that this architecture could make Welcome 4/5 too cluttered. In fact without seeing it, some mentioned that if the number of services grew and the lists of e-services for each account became extensive then architecture like Welcome 7 should be put in place.
Welcome 7 had participants choose the account they wanted to work on, and then a page with just that account and its relevant services appeared. Besides indicating that this would be a good architecture if there were a lot of e-services on MyBA, participants appreciated the logic behind how it was organized. Participants praised it for being compact and concise. Some participants indicated that this approach would be good for users who have experience with the CRA site.
Welcome 6 was not appreciated, and was viewed negatively. On this page, participants would chose from a list of functions on the Welcome page, and then choose an account to work on. Participants said that this architecture has too many clicks associated with it and that it does not make much logical sense.
Across all three pages, participants appreciated that the pages would be dynamic – only relevant information to their business would be displayed. For example, if a viewer was a sole proprietorship, not a corporation, with employees and collected GST/HST, the two accounts that would show would be the RP (Payroll account) and RT (GST/HST account).
Future Services for My Business Account
Participants were asked about future services that they would want to see on MyBA. They indicated that the highest and immediate priority should be given to services that would allow them to:
- View present and historical account information and status of activities (returns filed, received, assessed, overdue, outstanding)
- File returns online
- Transfer funds between periods.
- Change and maintain account information such as business addresses, business names, names of directors and cancelling or adding Business Numbers.
Participants were also interested in the following services (while they indicated these could be secondary priorities, they wanted to see these developed in the short-term):
- Linking to a bank account so that funds could be directly transferred to CRA and allowing CRA to direct deposit credits to the bank account.
- Transferring funds among accounts (e.g., GST/HST-Payroll, Payroll-Corporate Income Tax, etc.)
- Third Parties wanted access to capital accounts such as CCA balances, non capital and net capital losses, refundable dividend tax on hand, investment tax credits and online adjustments to T2 returns.
Participants were interested in the following and indicated these as medium-term priorities:
- Online chats with the CRA representatives
- Electronic Notices/E-mail. In fact, participants were asked if they still want to receive a paper letter if they received an Electronic Notice letter from the MyBA site. Opinion was split. Half indicated that they would still want the follow-up letter, and half would not.
Authentication for Other Government Bodies
Participants were asked if they wanted to use their CRA authentication to access similar services offered by other federal, provincial and municipal websites. Overall, many participants were fairly receptive to having authentication information shared between the CRA's and other sites. They liked the concept and the convenience of having only one log in and the fact that they could just go to the CRA site and not have to remember links for individual websites. Some participants indicated that the Payroll Account (a federal function) and Workers Compensation Board (a provincial function) tend to be worked-on at the same time.
However, only a few participants frequently and regularly accessed other provincial and municipal finance services. These were either multi-jurisdictional businesses or companies that have a lot of dealings with the municipal government, and participants from these businesses found this type of service to be very useful.
Marketing MyBA
Participants were asked what they would need to hear to entice them to use My Business Account. They mentioned:
- Save time, simple to use, user-friendly and access from anywhere at any time
- Data accuracy
- Reduced paper use
- Easy access
In terms of ways of communicating about MyBA, participants mentioned:
- Statement inserts would not be too effective – they are discarded before a decision maker reads them.
- Direct mail with “IMPORTANT CRA NOTICE” or “NOTICE OF CHANGE” would be very effective
- Showing a picture of Welcome 4/5. This page conveys simplicity, the types of service and saving time.
- In-person seminars
- Receiving a “training video” of the site like a promotional interactive CD/DVD that could be shown as a presentation or during a lunch meeting.
Key Findings
The research indicated that overall, there was enthusiasm for MyBA, which was driven by the hope that it would reduce the amount of time participants would have to spend dealing with the CRA. They were concerned about permissions given to various account users – who would have permission to view the account, transfer balances between accounts and authorize direct payments to the CRA.
Participants preferred a Welcome page for MyBA that shows all the relevant accounts for a business and the functions for each account on one page. They felt this type of architecture is a good introduction to MyBA, as it lets people know about all the services that are available. If the CRA adds a significant amount of services to MyBA such that the page gets crowded, participants suggested an architecture where they would choose an account first and then the function within that account.
Participants said that MyBA's immediate focus should be on developing services that allow them to view detailed current and historical account information and status of activities. Immediate focus should also be placed on filing online, transferring funds between periods and changing and maintaining account information. Also, participants were receptive to the concept of having authentication information shared between the CRA's site and other provincial and municipal websites.
Participants said that the key messages about MyBA should be about saving time, data accuracy, reduced paper use and easy access. Participants said that direct mail will work best at getting their attention, and that it should say “IMPORTANT NOTICE OF CHANGE” to really get them to notice it
