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← Curriculum /E-services and digital channels /Level 2

Online mail and electronic correspondence

Draft — unverified

Electronic correspondence looks like a preference setting and behaves like a legal one. When a taxpayer moves to online mail, CRA stops sending certain items on paper and instead notifies them that something is waiting. The consequence that matters is not convenience: deadlines that run from the date a notice is sent keep running whether or not the taxpayer opened the email, saw it, or still uses the address they gave. A taxpayer who has changed email providers and stopped receiving notifications has not stopped receiving correspondence. This is the topic most likely to underlie a call that presents as something else entirely — a missed objection deadline, an unnoticed review letter, a benefit that stopped without warning.

How to work through this tutorial

This works from the mechanism to its consequences: 1. Understand what electronic correspondence actually changes. 2. Learn what the notification email is and, importantly, what it is not. 3. Understand why deadlines are the real subject of this topic. 4. Learn what happens when the notification address stops working. 5. Learn how a taxpayer changes the setting, and what changing it does not undo. 6. Work through an example of a deadline missed without any notice arriving. 7. Check your work against the common errors. 8. Verify every specific against CRA's published guidance before relying on it.

What it changes

Under electronic correspondence, items CRA would have posted are instead made available in the taxpayer's online account, and CRA sends an email saying something is there. What travels this way is specified by CRA and does not necessarily cover everything. Some correspondence continues on paper regardless of the setting. So "I get everything by email now" is not a safe description, and neither is "nothing comes on paper any more". The important structural point is that the item itself is the thing in the account. The email is an alert about it, not a copy of it and not the correspondence. That single distinction generates most of what follows.

The notification is not the notice

The email CRA sends says that correspondence is available. It does not contain the correspondence, and it deliberately contains no taxpayer information — a notification that leaked the contents would be a disclosure to whoever controls the mailbox. That design has an implication worth stating plainly on calls: an email that arrives with figures, attachments, links to a refund, or a demand for payment is not this. It is the shape of a phishing attempt. Taxpayers who have signed up for online mail are, ironically, the population most primed to click on a convincing fake, because they are expecting CRA to email them. So the two facts belong together in one breath: CRA will email you to say something is waiting, and CRA will not email you the thing. An agent who gives only the first half has made the taxpayer easier to defraud.

Deadlines are the real subject

A great many periods in tax administration run from the date on a notice or the date it was sent — the window to object, the window to respond to a request for information, the window to make an instalment. Those periods are not conditional on the taxpayer having read anything. Correspondence made available in the account has been provided. The clock starts. This is why a setting that looks like a mailing preference deserves the weight given here. A taxpayer who stops seeing notifications does not stop being subject to deadlines, and the first sign of a problem is often a consequence rather than a letter: a benefit stopped, a balance escalated, an objection refused as late. When a caller says they never received something, establish early whether they are on electronic correspondence. It reframes the whole call, and it changes what can be done for them — a request for relief on the basis of not having seen a notice is a different conversation from one that begins with a lost letter.

When the email address stops working

The weak point is the address. People change providers, lose access to old accounts, mistype the address at sign-up, or find CRA's notifications routed to a spam folder. CRA's notification is sent to the address on file. If that address no longer reaches the taxpayer, correspondence continues to be issued and continues to be provided — silently, from the taxpayer's point of view. CRA has processes for what happens when notification emails fail to deliver, and the taxpayer can update the address themselves in the portal. The practical advice worth giving is preventive rather than remedial: a taxpayer on electronic correspondence should sign in periodically rather than relying on being told to, and should keep the address current the way they would keep a mailing address current. An agent handling a "I never got it" call from someone on online mail should include a check of the notification address as a matter of course.

Changing the setting

The setting is a choice and it can be changed. A taxpayer can move to electronic correspondence and can go back to paper, through the portal. Two things do not follow from changing it. First, changing to paper does not un-issue correspondence already provided electronically, and it does not restart a clock that already began. Second, correspondence sitting unread in the account does not get posted out because the preference changed. So the useful sequence for a taxpayer who has realised they have been missing things is: change the setting if they want to, and then go and read what is already there. The second half is the part that gets forgotten and the part that matters.

A worked example: a deadline that ran in silence

Teaching example. The figures below are invented to show the method. They are not CRA figures, and no amount here should be used for a real taxpayer.

The dates and details in this example are invented for teaching. Nothing here should be quoted as CRA's position, and the deadline used is illustrative — confirm the real one. Suppose Ingrid signed up for online mail three years ago using her work email address. She changed jobs last year and that mailbox was closed. CRA reassesses her return and makes the notice of reassessment available in her account. A notification is sent to the closed address and goes nowhere. Ingrid, who has no reason to sign in, knows nothing. Suppose the period for objecting runs from the date on that notice. It runs, and it expires, and Ingrid is entirely unaware that anything has happened. She finds out months later when a balance is collected against a subsequent refund. Her account of events — "nobody told me" — is honest and, in the ordinary sense of the word, true. The notice was nonetheless provided. What can actually be done for her is a separate question with its own rules: there are provisions for extending the time to object and for relief in some circumstances, and neither is automatic. What must not happen is an agent agreeing on the call that she was not notified, or promising an outcome. The habit: when a caller says they never received something, ask about electronic correspondence and about the address on file. Both answers change the call.

Common errors

Describing electronic correspondence as a mailing preference. It changes when a taxpayer is taken to have been given a notice. Telling a taxpayer CRA will email them, without adding that CRA does not email the contents. The first half alone makes them easier to defraud. Assuming everything moves to online mail. Some correspondence continues on paper. Accepting "I never received it" as establishing that a notice was not provided. Forgetting to check the notification email address on a call about unreceived correspondence. Assuming switching back to paper reissues what was already provided electronically, or restarts a period that has begun. Quoting the length of an objection period, or any other deadline, from memory. Confirm it. Promising relief or an extension on a call. Both are governed by their own rules and are not automatic.

What to verify this tutorial against

This was drafted without a source document. What travels electronically, and the rules about when correspondence is treated as provided, are the load-bearing specifics here. CRA's pages on email notifications and electronic correspondence set out how the service works, what correspondence it covers, what continues on paper, and how a taxpayer changes the setting and the address. CRA's guidance on recognising genuine CRA email is the reference for the phishing point, and is what to quote to a taxpayer rather than paraphrasing. CRA's guidance on objections sets out the period for filing one and the provisions for applying to extend it. Take the period from there — it is exactly the kind of number that must not be recalled. CRA's taxpayer relief guidance covers the circumstances in which relief may be considered where a taxpayer did not act in time, and makes clear that it is discretionary. The Income Tax Act provisions on when a notice is treated as sent and received are the legal underpinning of the deadline point in this tutorial. Confirm which provision applies before citing one. Note for the reviewer: the claim that a deadline runs regardless of whether the taxpayer read the notification is the single most consequential statement in this tutorial. Verify it precisely, and narrow it if the published position is narrower.

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