Canadians have less than a month to file their tax returns prior to the April 30 deadline. But recent Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) statistics suggests many taxpayers are putting off filing this year.

In the 2005 tax year, 3.8 million Canadians filed their taxes using the CRA Netfile service.

In tax year 2006, only 1.3 million Canadians had used Netfile to file their taxes by March 25, 2007.

One possibility for the delay is the CRA’s internal technical difficulties earlier in March, which halted all electronic filing services for over a week, suggests Intuit Canada, the makers of QuickTax.

“The CRA’s database glitch likely had something to do with it, but QuickTax users should know that the issue has been resolved,” said Yves Millette, president and CEO of Intuit Canada.

Four out of five people (83% in tax year 2005) who used Netfile to file their tax return used an Intuit Canada product, such as QuickTax desktop or the online version.

“Electronic filing provides tremendous environmental benefits and saves the federal government millions of taxpayer dollars every year,” added Millette. “Netfile is a great global model; most other countries have yet to catch up to us.”

Recent statistics from Intuit Canada show Toronto leads the list of last-minute filers; six out of the top 10 procrastinating cities are based in Western Canada.