CRA Correspondence: A Firm System for Every Notice

Why CRA letters get lost between the client and the firm

CRA correspondence gets lost because it arrives in the wrong place: the client's mailbox, the client's online account, a partner's inbox mid-season. Nobody logs it, so nobody owns it, and the response window runs while everyone assumes someone else has it.

The fix is not vigilance — it is a system with four parts: one intake point, an owner per item, a recorded response deadline, and a note on the client file. Each part is small; the absence of any one of them recreates the problem.

What the CRA sends: the common notice types

Most firm-relevant CRA mail falls into a handful of types: notices of assessment and reassessment, pre- and post-assessment review letters, demands to file, instalment reminders, and collections letters. Each carries a different clock — which is why the type is logged, not just the arrival.

• Notice of assessment (NOA) — the CRA's read of a filed return
• Notice of reassessment — a changed assessment, with an objection window
• Review letters — requests to support specific claims, with a stated response date
• Demand to file — escalates penalties where a return is outstanding
• Instalment reminders — state suggested amounts and due dates for the year
• Collections letters — balances the CRA intends to pursue

Step 1 — One intake point, logged the day it arrives

Every notice, however it arrives, is logged in one place the day the firm learns of it: which client, which notice type, the date on the letter and the date received. Clients are told once, clearly: forward anything from the CRA the day it arrives.

Where the firm is authorised through Represent a Client, staff can also see much of a client's correspondence directly, which turns intake from waiting on forwards into a check the firm controls. Log it against the client record either way — visibility is not the same as ownership.

Step 2 — Every notice gets a named owner

Each logged item is assigned to one named person — not a team, not 'the firm'. The owner reads it, decides the response, and closes the item. Unowned correspondence is how a reassessment sits unread for five weeks of its objection window.

In practice this is a task with an assignee and a due date. Firms running SpidNums create it against the client with the response date as the deadline, so it surfaces in the same Reminders feed as filings rather than on a separate list nobody checks.

Step 3 — Treat response windows like filing deadlines

A review letter states a response date; an objection to a reassessment runs on a strict clock from the date on the notice. Both are hard deadlines with consequences — claims denied, assessments standing — and they belong in the same deadline system as the T2s.

Log the deadline from the document itself, not from memory of what the window usually is, and build in the firm's own buffer: a response that needs client documents is really two deadlines — the client's and the CRA's.

Step 4 — Respond through the right channel and record it

Responses go through the channel the notice specifies — typically online through Represent a Client, sometimes by mail — and the file records what was sent, when, and by whom. If it is not written down, the firm cannot later prove it happened.

Confirmation matters as much as the response: reference numbers, submission confirmations and follow-up dates go on the same client note, so the next person who opens the file sees the whole exchange, not the first half of it.

Step 5 — Keep proof of client contact on the file

Every client conversation about a notice — the call explaining the review, the email chasing receipts, the decision not to object — is recorded as a dated note on the client record. When outcomes are disputed months later, the contemporaneous note is the firm's defence.

This is where correspondence handling joins the wider client record. Firms using a client database like SpidNums keep these notes with the client's services, deadlines and history, so 'what happened with that review?' has one answer, in one place.