Last year, the Canada Revenue Agency rolled out a pilot program that allowed chartered accountants and professional tax preparers to automatically enter clients’ data onto a digital personal tax form using most certain types of certified tax software.

This tax season, the CRA program called Auto-fill will be available to all taxpayers making electronic tax filing much easier for more people. Bit should you be worried about privacy?

The following are the line which Auto-fill will automatically enter:

  • T3, Statement of Trust Income Allocations and Designations
  • T4, Statement of Remuneration Paid
  • T4A, Statement of Pension, Retirement, Annuity, and Other Income
  • T4A(OAS), Statement of Old Age Security
  • T4A(P), Statement of Canada Pension Plan Benefits
  • T4E, Statement of Employment Insurance and Other Benefits
  • T4RIF, Statement of Income from a Registered Retirement Income Fund
  • T4RSP, Statement of Registered Retirement Savings Plan Income
  • T5, Statement of Investment Income
  • T5007, Statement of Benefits
  • T5008, Statement of Securities Transactions
  • RC62, Universal Child Care Benefit Statement
  • RC210, Working Income Tax Benefit Advance Payments Statement
  • registered retirement savings plan contribution receipt

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Other tax-related information includes:

    • Registered Retirement Savings Plan contribution limit
    • Home Buyers’ Plan repayment amount
    • Lifelong Learning Plan repayment amount
    • Non-capital losses
    • Capital gains and losses
    • Capital gains deductions
    • Federal tuition, education, and textbook carryover amounts
    • Provincial tuition, education, and textbook carryover amounts

For more information, go to Tax information slips.

That’s a lot of sensitive private information going online and there has been a history of government data systems being breached. But according to the CRA, Auto-fill, formerly called Tax Data Delivery, is a secure service.

However, in an interview with CBC, Ann Cavoukian, former Ontario privacy commissioner and current executive director of the Privacy & Big Data Institute at Ryerson University, said it is right to be concerned about privacy and security whenever new services are introduced.

She said conducting a privacy impact assessment to pinpoint potential privacy risks before a roll out is essential. “I would hope the government would have done their due diligence before launching,” said Cavoukian.