The Canada Revenue Agency is on a “witch hunt” to find whistleblowers who may have spoken to the media and exposed how it has been repeatedly duped into paying out millions in bogus refunds to scammers, according to sources.
“The consensus is that management is nervous,” one source said. “Any media contacts [they’re saying]: ‘Don’t talk to them at all, don’t talk to journalists.’ I think they’re very much trying to control the narrative.”
According to multiple sources, the CRA’s senior leadership is anxious, looking for ways to silence employees and to limit media coverage.
Last month, an investigation by CBC’s The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada revealed the tax collector has been keeping Canadians largely in the dark about how many hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds it has wrongly paid out, as well as the extent to which taxpayers have had their CRA accounts hacked by fraudsters.
I appreciate the speed at which my tax refunds are processed annually, but it’s becoming clear that the “pay now, do the math later” philosophy isn’t working. I read somewhere that philosophy is deliberate in order to make the CRA look more efficient. I guess it’s just become more efficient at being defrauded which sucks.
Back in 2011 when I left my husband I had to provide two letters from social workers that verified the separation was real, and 6 months of bills verifying my new address.
Why don’t people claiming a $40 million tax refund have to do the same?
Great. Damn. Question.
The article explains,
without verifying what turned out to be sham documents.
In other words, they did have to do the same thing, but instead of spending lots of time and money on the real thing (which was impossible for them anyways because - you know, they’re scammers) they did it for free with tools like photoshop.
Now, the lack of verification is probably a new thing post covid - if someone had tried this back in 2011 I’m guessing the CRA would have attempted to verify, caught that they were sham documents, and serious consequences would ensure.
Or … and hear me out here … the CRA has never spent as much time and money on auditing/verifying the taxes of the rich as they have the taxes of the poor and lower middle class.
Just ask single mothers whose child tax benefit gets cut off for no reason.
Hmm… well that’s disappointing. I know the IRS in the US does this (as per https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-easier-and-cheaper-to-audit-the-poor ) was hoping Canada was made of stronger stuff.
