CRA Pays Millions to ex Employees :CRA SOTW
Alan Baggett
Canada Revenue Agency pays millions to staff no longer on payroll
Posted By Dean Beeby, The Canadian Press
OTTAWA — The Canada Revenue Agency has issued at least $3 million in
paycheques to people who don’t work there, says a new audit.
‘‘Overpayments generally occur when employees leave the agency and
through errors or omissions their pay is not stopped on time,’’ says
the internal report.
The problem dates back at least to 1999 and has been getting worse in
recent years, the investigators found.
There were 1,922 people who received pay they didn’t deserve in the
2005-06 fiscal year, says the document. The number rose to 2,258 the
following year.
By February last year, the outstanding amount not yet returned to the
agency had reached $3 million, up from $2.2 million two years
earlier.
‘‘Although the amount of overpayments represents a small fraction of
CRA’s total payroll costs, a 36 per cent increase over two fiscal
years is significant,’’ the audit concludes.
The agency is currently attempting to identify the older amounts
‘‘with the intent of writing off any uncollectable balances,’’ says
the document, dated last October.
Senior managers told the auditors they will decide by next month on an
acceptable level of overpayments, and begin to monitor the problem
quarterly to ensure the amounts are within established limits — in
effect, acknowledging that mistakes will continue to be made.
A spokesman noted the agency has about 43,000 workers, and the
overpayments represent less than one per cent of the annual salary
budget of $2.8 billion.
‘‘Overpayments often result from situations that are variable in
nature and unpredictable, such as death in service or unexpected leave
without pay due to illness and family-related issues,’’ Noel Carisse
said in an email response to questions.
In 2007-08 the agency trimmed the amount of outstanding overpayments
back to $2.4 million, he added.
Carisse said management recovers the ‘‘vast majority’’ of overpayments
made to former staff, sometimes by clawing back pension or severance
pay, though he did not provide a figure.
About a third of all overpayment cases involve staff who permanently
leave the agency, rather than those taking unpaid leave or other
options that remove them from their jobs temporarily.
Some ex-employees find jobs in other federal government departments,
with whom arrangements can be made to recoup the money, Carisse said.
‘‘Since this review, considerable work has been completed on the
management and analysis of overpayments in the agency to ensure the
percentage of overpayments in the agency is as low as possible,’’ he
said.
The audit also found paycheques to existing employees were frequently
late and contained errors.
A sampling of 258 pay transactions from October 2006 to June 2007, for
example, found 13 had incorrect amounts paid to employees — four of
them with errors greater than $5,000. That works out to a five per
cent error rate, the maximum permitted under agency guidelines.
news.dai...@shawcable.com
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