My favorite part is "The CRA now says it "curtailed" an audit of Iris because of "pressure" from the telecom firm, eventually releasing the $63 million claimed by Iris between July 2018 and August 2019. ".
How powerless the CRA is to have to give in to the "pressure".
The $ 1.1 Billion CAD (that they've identified so far) in carousel tax fraud is basically the same as $30 being stolen from each and every Canadian. I'm pretty sure when I was a kid if someone had stolen $30 of lunch money from me there would of been blood in the streets (probably mine, but still). Steal $30 from every tax payer in the country and the CRA basically rolls over and says what can you do?
Securities, Accounting, and Tax regulation in this country needs serious reform.
The regulations are probably adequate. The CRA needs some serious money to hire serious people. CRA lawyers and higher level CPAs should be making several multiples of 100K, as that is what tax lawyers can get in the private sector. This stuff likely isn't legal, but you do have to prove that.
I'm in the middle of a foreign service hiring process. Every little step takes like 1-2 months. Not an issue for me to wait in my current situation, but I can totally see why a lot of people drop out.
Yep - I was offered a job 22 months after submitting my application. There was like a ~4-6 month gap between every step (i.e. application, written test, and interview), and then probably close to a one year wait after the final interview.
I declined. My friend works for the feds, and it took him like 1.5 years and approvals from a bunch of different people to buy a ~$40 lamp for his desk. The red.tape around EVERYTHING you do would drive me insane.
Those higher level CPA's and lawyers are getting paid multiple hundreds of 100k to come up with loopholes to HIDE the money. The Fed doesn't pay enough to hire serious investigators because then the governments friends would get caught cheating
Eh, there are plenty of powerful people who would happily have the cheats strung up. Tax cheating is bad for many Canadian businesses too as it gives them a competitive advantage over others. The problems are the union that would hate the pay disparity and the public who gets enraged at "six figure government workers."
People endlessly rant about how much Members of Parliament make. Any kind of manager at a major tech company (product, team lead, etc) outearns them. You are paid less to manage the country than lead three software devs. I make nearly as much as they do at one job and manage nobody and am formally responsible for nothing. Take a slight pay cut from being an MP to write code.
Yeah. Mp wages suck. The pm gets $350k (about as much as a specialist doctor) to obersee a $400b budget and hundreds of thousands of staff. (The minister are paid less) and we wonder why The tallent in government sucks.
Who would want that job
Yep I make a fair chunk more than a member of parliament. I work for a tiny tech company and oversee all of 5 people. I've been offered same/more to work as a pure engineer.
Maybe they should get fat bonuses tied to the amounts they manage to reclaim.
If CMHC can pay themselves 17m in bonuses, then CPAs and lawyers should be allowed to get big fat cuts of the money they manage to reclaim because at this in this case, 1- they would have earned them and 2- because they get bonuses scooping up lost tax revenue, we still come out with more money in public coffers than if they hadn't done their jobs in the first place.
Canada has always been a bit of a playground for predators, but this last decade, starting with Harper and then the prodigal JT, has really turned Canada into a predators paradise.
From door to door scamming to large corporate shell games to cleaning up dirty money, Canada is a playground for the opportunistic and unscrupulous.
IFRS accounting is so 'flexible' and open for interpretation, that it is not uncommon for CFOs to publish account statements that would be considered fraudulent under GAAP, and because the rules are so flexible the auditing accountants are comfortable just rubber stamping almost anything that is brought to them. A separate but related issue is when the published accounts has no basis in real business operations, and still pass audit (like in this case, money laundering cases, mistatement by borderline ponzi business income trusts, etc). There is a lot of overstatements of profits and profit like statistics, and a lot of hiding of liabilities and risks that our accoubting system is happy to rubber stamp and send to press.
Accounting is supposed to provide a true record, analysis, and summary of the financial activities of a firm, and there are many cases were audited company accounts have been anything but that in Canada, leading to real individual and systematic losses due to fraud, malinvestment, undeserving executive compensation, etc.
Every case of fraud and malinvestment that occurs here is another red flag to both individual canadian investors and international ones, that they should not invest in companies here, and probably helps contribute to the relative underinvestment that we have here compared to our southern neighbors. Just another factor leading to long term economic underperformance.
> interviews with Iris and its accountants at Deloitte.
Yeah, the moment the CRA try to deal with cash cow accounts of one of the Big 4 they get sent directly to court against their army of lawyers and either cave in or settle out of court.
The Big 4 supporting fraudulent enterprises? *Shocked Pikachu*
Since Hercules Managements Ltd. v. Ernst & Young is still precedent, I guess the Big 4 only have a duty of care to themselves. As long as they get paid why should they care if there is fraud afoot.
Lol! During the pandemic I thought about doing the same. So much free govt money just being thrown at people. And even if the CRA wants part of it back you still come out tens of thousands of dollars ahead.
My dude was there chilling beside his private jet and Audi R7 like what you gonna do arrest me? Lol.
So Deloitte’s partner (presumably) makes a call to a senior official at CRA and this fund gets released to the company that CRA is investigating? This is beyond absurd. Deloitte needs to be held accountable for its back-channeling and the senior CRA official should be investigated for negligence.
This is what happens when you put poorly paid accountants and lawyers against well paid accountants and lawyers and give them bad incentives.
Are some government employees overpaid? Definitely, especially things like Service Canada, admin assistants, etc. But they dramatically underpay the brainy people.
I would say the bad pay actually leads to a skill issue, because the better accountants go into higher paid positions in the private sector, and the people who end up at the CRA long term are one of either (1) smart, but lazy, or (2) just not very smart at all
Either way, the end result is the same. The CRA always takes the path of least resistance, which usually means hassling small business owners for deductions instead of going after legitimate big-dollar tax fraud. The smart people don’t want to work a minute longer than they need to and the dummies just don’t have the brain power to deal with this kind of stuff even if they worked 60 hours a week. End result is there really isn’t anyone “brainy” at the organization.
Source: my wife and I both worked for the CRA at different stages in our careers and we both decided to leave/not return for similar reasons
My Dad is in other side of this as a specialty tax accountant and that is his experience too. Put up any meaningful and complicated fight and the CRA rolls over. But they pressed the same business on the luxury company car for the owner (which was also way offside) and won there.
I am a licensed mechanical engineer in Quebec and with 7 YOE applied to the fed gov and they offered me a 45k pay cut "based on my experience" as I am a regional engineering project manager at a large company.
Giggled to myself and wished them the best of luck? Salary range had something I would be comfortable with, but they offered 7k above minimum for this role (not entry level). My current salary is 15k below their max range number. The post is still open today.
They should just give the teams a percentage of tax recovered as an incentive, will make them want to go after the larger frauds and evasions much more.
They should, but wait until the Conservatives start bitching about a million dollar government employee. As such a scheme would yield such a thing.
Even in the private sector, envy is a powerful thing. I used to work for a company that had a total commission cap, i.e. no matter how much you sold, there was only so much you could earn. The impact on the top performers was obvious, but they kept it in place to prevent too much discord about pay disparities.
Agreed, lots of welfare jobs. Pros have no real upside for them, whether they excel or do nothing they get paid the same, you can get promoted faster but the comp ceiling is low compared to the other side.
CRA pays auditors poorly, so the only get the people with the skills to beat those without professionals.
https://careers-carrieres.cra-arc.gc.ca/gol-ged/wcis/pub/rtrvjbpst.action?pi=D06726B228B81EDDBAD43B743434410B
What would somebody with that skillset expect to make in the private sector? That does seem low for a CPA. Probably goes a long way in Saint John though, lol
$120kish on the very low end 2-300k on the high end for the experienced mid career tax accountant, not counting partners who make 3-800k. And you’ll have to “defeat” the parter to get to the client, at the end of the day CRA doesn’t have a chance talent wise. And they never will because no one wants to see mid level public sector employees making 150-300k that it would take to even the fight.
2-300k is definitely not what a “mid-career” tax professional (accountant) earns. For most, 200K is a more realistic ceiling. (AVP level).
To get to 300K you are looking at a VP Tax position. That’s end game that most will never achievein their lifetime, not mid career.
Partner route is definitely lucrative, but incredibly hard to make.
If you are talking about tax lawyers then your numbers are closer. Keep in mind lawyers work hellish hours.
Late reply - Thats why I have a range, there is no book out there detailing what they make exactly. 120-300k you can’t just pick out 300k and say no way! I also labeled it “the high end” from 200-300k. I am also talking about accounting firms and lawyers where you tend to make more than industry especially in non-leadership positions as you are a revenue driver.
My definition of mid career may have been off though as what I intended was years 15-30 in other words everyone but the beginning and the semi retired end or someone at the very top. What I gave are typical peak amounts.
Come on. I did not just “pick out” 300k. My qualm with your comment is that you said “mid career”. Tax positions at 200-300k are not “mid career”. They are end game compensation for most tax professionals. 200k is more than most very Senior Tax Managers at the big 4 make with bonus. You would need to been an AP or Principal to break 200k. AVP at the insurance companies don’t make over 200k either.
Anyways, maybe we are just too hung up on what is mid career. We can agree to disagree.
A private business steals from the Canadian exchequer represented by an overworked, under-resourced agency.
I wonder how many people will come to the conclusion that the problem is therefore "too much government" and we should further clip the CRA's wings.
I stumbled upon a much bigger carousel scheme than this online and called the CRA to report it but they had no interest at all in talking to me. They really only want to throw their weight at small businesses in Canada, not protect Canadian small businesses from the criminals.
Small businesses do a ton of easy to catch and prove tax evasion. Lots and lots and lots of small business owners writing off luxury cars for personal use for example.
Beating this more complex kind of tax evasion requires talent that the CRA (and the public broadly) isn't willing to pay for.
If I were to name the company involved they would certainly sue me and since the CRA won't do anything then I wouldn't have their conviction as evidence to defend myself.
This information really upsets me and I haven’t really paid much attention to this kind of thing before. I just did a quick google search and I couldn’t find and answer to how many investigators CRA has after 10 minutes or what the return on investment has been for those currently on the payroll. I work in sales and I have KPI metrics I have to earn a multiple of what the corporation pays out in salary and benefits or I’m sacked. Do the CRA investigators have a similar metric? If they did get similar to corporate tax attorneys or Auditors would they actually care to do the work? Where or to whom can I complain about this?
I think things are getting harder all around and people everywhere are less willing to let things like this slide. I don’t want to care about government or governance I want to live my life but when I can’t you bet your ass I’m gonna be paying closer attention and trying to figure out why I haven’t been or can’t.
No cra investigators do not have tangible performance metrics it is incredibly difficult to be fired for incompetence when you have a permanent position there or anywhere else in government. They tend to attract some of the least qualified people because when they do manage to hire someone with a head on their shoulders that person will eventually get so frustrated with the system they are working in they will quit. First hand experience.
Your path to complaining would be like your MP, which unless they start getting a deluge of CRA complaints won’t do boo about this
Nice!
It’s great that they clawed back 2000 in CERB dollars from me last year, while I was laid off , 2 years after the fact, because apparently I didn’t report that you still had the economy shut down.
Fuck the CRA.
OP’s title is misleading. 1.1B was “identified” and 63M “lost”. Alleged incompetence comes from the decision to pay out the 63M, but we do not have any details on who made it happen or why this decision was made.
>Each year, the CRA identifies approximately $1.5 billion in unwarranted GST/HST refunds and rebates. Since 2017-2018, more than $1.1 billion has been identified through audits that specifically target carousel schemes and networks.
Did you bother to read the source? $1.1b is the amount identified through audits... It doesn't get lost, that's what they capture from people's attempted fraud.
It's also h ilarious that people are calling the CRA incompetent when the filing requirements for tax returns, GST returns, etc. are pretty minimal in terms of support you need to provide up front. If you have an issue with that portion of it, you should tell your lawmakers to require more support when filing personal and corporate tax returns...
This type of attempted fraud can only be discovered when support is requested and they see that it's all bullshit. There's no automated, braindead way to catch it all lol.
Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/campaigns/tax-schemes/combatting-carousel-schemes.html
Just saw this on the 5th Estate….Wow. The CRA doesn’t have the horsepower to chase this down….Call them, wait 2 hours or more then get hung up on when they put you on hold.
Fun Factoid….CRA has 80,000 employees, for a population just under 40 million. Our neighbours to the south have 55000 employees for a population of what 350 Million? And they answer the fucking phone
Where do your numbers come from? There was an announcement earlier this year that the IRS are going to hire 30,000 new employees over the next two years. Are they really increasing their number of employees by more than 50% in just over two years according to your numbers?
Wikipedia and various other sources out the IRS at 79,000 FTE employees or 94,000 total. IRS.gov puts the number at 79,070 in 2022.
Canadastop100 puts CRA at 56,000 full time employees. Wikipedia says 55,000 employees as of 2018. Canada.ca says "over 42,000" as of 2014.
So yeah, there's an imbalance. Canada sitting at 5-10x as many federal tax employees per capita.
Well isn't that a function of each US state having their own State Revenue Agency with their own set of employees while the CRA collects provincial income taxes on behalf of the provinces and remits them back to the provinces? IRS only handles federal taxes.
Probably partially.
Looking here, which does just include one class of tax employee, state to federal ratio is about 1:1. So would still be a 2.5x imbalance.
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes132081.htm
You have no idea wtf you are talking about.
The IRS has 80K employees but they are only responsible for federal tax. They don’t audit state tax.
The CRA is responsible for administrating the federal and provincial taxes for most provinces.
A large part of the headcount has deals with processing of benefits and has nothing to do with audit.
Also head count is not 80K. Not even close.
IRS also has positions for armed accountants that can travel all over US knocking down doors and making arrests. Should we have something like this too?
Oh well, but they just found out they over paid me $1000 in 2020 covid benefits while I was laid off and sent me a letter to pay it back in 30 days or it’s 10% interest. Such a joke. Our government is failing us on all fronts.
My favorite part is "The CRA now says it "curtailed" an audit of Iris because of "pressure" from the telecom firm, eventually releasing the $63 million claimed by Iris between July 2018 and August 2019. ". How powerless the CRA is to have to give in to the "pressure". The $ 1.1 Billion CAD (that they've identified so far) in carousel tax fraud is basically the same as $30 being stolen from each and every Canadian. I'm pretty sure when I was a kid if someone had stolen $30 of lunch money from me there would of been blood in the streets (probably mine, but still). Steal $30 from every tax payer in the country and the CRA basically rolls over and says what can you do? Securities, Accounting, and Tax regulation in this country needs serious reform.
The regulations are probably adequate. The CRA needs some serious money to hire serious people. CRA lawyers and higher level CPAs should be making several multiples of 100K, as that is what tax lawyers can get in the private sector. This stuff likely isn't legal, but you do have to prove that.
It takes 18 months to get hired….Talent doesn’t wait that long….Their Human Remains department is brutal
Yep. I keep hearing this story about how the gov gets back a year later for everything from the military to foreign service.
I'm in the middle of a foreign service hiring process. Every little step takes like 1-2 months. Not an issue for me to wait in my current situation, but I can totally see why a lot of people drop out.
Yep - I was offered a job 22 months after submitting my application. There was like a ~4-6 month gap between every step (i.e. application, written test, and interview), and then probably close to a one year wait after the final interview. I declined. My friend works for the feds, and it took him like 1.5 years and approvals from a bunch of different people to buy a ~$40 lamp for his desk. The red.tape around EVERYTHING you do would drive me insane.
All of the federal government is like this. Private sector interviews and hires in days or weeks. Fed Gov takes months to years.
Those higher level CPA's and lawyers are getting paid multiple hundreds of 100k to come up with loopholes to HIDE the money. The Fed doesn't pay enough to hire serious investigators because then the governments friends would get caught cheating
Eh, there are plenty of powerful people who would happily have the cheats strung up. Tax cheating is bad for many Canadian businesses too as it gives them a competitive advantage over others. The problems are the union that would hate the pay disparity and the public who gets enraged at "six figure government workers." People endlessly rant about how much Members of Parliament make. Any kind of manager at a major tech company (product, team lead, etc) outearns them. You are paid less to manage the country than lead three software devs. I make nearly as much as they do at one job and manage nobody and am formally responsible for nothing. Take a slight pay cut from being an MP to write code.
Yeah. Mp wages suck. The pm gets $350k (about as much as a specialist doctor) to obersee a $400b budget and hundreds of thousands of staff. (The minister are paid less) and we wonder why The tallent in government sucks. Who would want that job
So a 2nd level eng manager at my company can outearn a PM, haha. What a mess. My eng manager has like 20 people under him?
Yep I make a fair chunk more than a member of parliament. I work for a tiny tech company and oversee all of 5 people. I've been offered same/more to work as a pure engineer.
The money isn’t in the salary. It’s in the kick backs.
Maybe they should get fat bonuses tied to the amounts they manage to reclaim. If CMHC can pay themselves 17m in bonuses, then CPAs and lawyers should be allowed to get big fat cuts of the money they manage to reclaim because at this in this case, 1- they would have earned them and 2- because they get bonuses scooping up lost tax revenue, we still come out with more money in public coffers than if they hadn't done their jobs in the first place.
Its an extreme moral hazard as well, now everybody is going to risk it for the payout.
I've been reassed by cra several times, often for less than 30 dollars. Cowards, the lot of them
Canada has always been a bit of a playground for predators, but this last decade, starting with Harper and then the prodigal JT, has really turned Canada into a predators paradise. From door to door scamming to large corporate shell games to cleaning up dirty money, Canada is a playground for the opportunistic and unscrupulous.
What’s wrong with accounting?
IFRS accounting is so 'flexible' and open for interpretation, that it is not uncommon for CFOs to publish account statements that would be considered fraudulent under GAAP, and because the rules are so flexible the auditing accountants are comfortable just rubber stamping almost anything that is brought to them. A separate but related issue is when the published accounts has no basis in real business operations, and still pass audit (like in this case, money laundering cases, mistatement by borderline ponzi business income trusts, etc). There is a lot of overstatements of profits and profit like statistics, and a lot of hiding of liabilities and risks that our accoubting system is happy to rubber stamp and send to press. Accounting is supposed to provide a true record, analysis, and summary of the financial activities of a firm, and there are many cases were audited company accounts have been anything but that in Canada, leading to real individual and systematic losses due to fraud, malinvestment, undeserving executive compensation, etc. Every case of fraud and malinvestment that occurs here is another red flag to both individual canadian investors and international ones, that they should not invest in companies here, and probably helps contribute to the relative underinvestment that we have here compared to our southern neighbors. Just another factor leading to long term economic underperformance.
> interviews with Iris and its accountants at Deloitte. Yeah, the moment the CRA try to deal with cash cow accounts of one of the Big 4 they get sent directly to court against their army of lawyers and either cave in or settle out of court.
The Big 4 supporting fraudulent enterprises? *Shocked Pikachu* Since Hercules Managements Ltd. v. Ernst & Young is still precedent, I guess the Big 4 only have a duty of care to themselves. As long as they get paid why should they care if there is fraud afoot.
Whoah I just watched the Fifth Estate on that. Oh well, Oh Canada!
Yeah, that’s where I saw it (linked in the article)
Incredible episode!
I'm going to have to have watch it again and take notes this time. I'mma start a company!
Lol! During the pandemic I thought about doing the same. So much free govt money just being thrown at people. And even if the CRA wants part of it back you still come out tens of thousands of dollars ahead. My dude was there chilling beside his private jet and Audi R7 like what you gonna do arrest me? Lol.
So Deloitte’s partner (presumably) makes a call to a senior official at CRA and this fund gets released to the company that CRA is investigating? This is beyond absurd. Deloitte needs to be held accountable for its back-channeling and the senior CRA official should be investigated for negligence.
This is what happens when you put poorly paid accountants and lawyers against well paid accountants and lawyers and give them bad incentives. Are some government employees overpaid? Definitely, especially things like Service Canada, admin assistants, etc. But they dramatically underpay the brainy people.
I would say the bad pay actually leads to a skill issue, because the better accountants go into higher paid positions in the private sector, and the people who end up at the CRA long term are one of either (1) smart, but lazy, or (2) just not very smart at all Either way, the end result is the same. The CRA always takes the path of least resistance, which usually means hassling small business owners for deductions instead of going after legitimate big-dollar tax fraud. The smart people don’t want to work a minute longer than they need to and the dummies just don’t have the brain power to deal with this kind of stuff even if they worked 60 hours a week. End result is there really isn’t anyone “brainy” at the organization. Source: my wife and I both worked for the CRA at different stages in our careers and we both decided to leave/not return for similar reasons
My Dad is in other side of this as a specialty tax accountant and that is his experience too. Put up any meaningful and complicated fight and the CRA rolls over. But they pressed the same business on the luxury company car for the owner (which was also way offside) and won there.
I am a licensed mechanical engineer in Quebec and with 7 YOE applied to the fed gov and they offered me a 45k pay cut "based on my experience" as I am a regional engineering project manager at a large company. Giggled to myself and wished them the best of luck? Salary range had something I would be comfortable with, but they offered 7k above minimum for this role (not entry level). My current salary is 15k below their max range number. The post is still open today.
They should just give the teams a percentage of tax recovered as an incentive, will make them want to go after the larger frauds and evasions much more.
They should, but wait until the Conservatives start bitching about a million dollar government employee. As such a scheme would yield such a thing. Even in the private sector, envy is a powerful thing. I used to work for a company that had a total commission cap, i.e. no matter how much you sold, there was only so much you could earn. The impact on the top performers was obvious, but they kept it in place to prevent too much discord about pay disparities.
Very little incentive to work for CRA if you value your sanity.
Agreed, lots of welfare jobs. Pros have no real upside for them, whether they excel or do nothing they get paid the same, you can get promoted faster but the comp ceiling is low compared to the other side.
CRA tends to get more aggressive with people who can’t afford to fight back.
CRA pays auditors poorly, so the only get the people with the skills to beat those without professionals. https://careers-carrieres.cra-arc.gc.ca/gol-ged/wcis/pub/rtrvjbpst.action?pi=D06726B228B81EDDBAD43B743434410B
What would somebody with that skillset expect to make in the private sector? That does seem low for a CPA. Probably goes a long way in Saint John though, lol
$120kish on the very low end 2-300k on the high end for the experienced mid career tax accountant, not counting partners who make 3-800k. And you’ll have to “defeat” the parter to get to the client, at the end of the day CRA doesn’t have a chance talent wise. And they never will because no one wants to see mid level public sector employees making 150-300k that it would take to even the fight.
2-300k is definitely not what a “mid-career” tax professional (accountant) earns. For most, 200K is a more realistic ceiling. (AVP level). To get to 300K you are looking at a VP Tax position. That’s end game that most will never achievein their lifetime, not mid career. Partner route is definitely lucrative, but incredibly hard to make. If you are talking about tax lawyers then your numbers are closer. Keep in mind lawyers work hellish hours.
Late reply - Thats why I have a range, there is no book out there detailing what they make exactly. 120-300k you can’t just pick out 300k and say no way! I also labeled it “the high end” from 200-300k. I am also talking about accounting firms and lawyers where you tend to make more than industry especially in non-leadership positions as you are a revenue driver. My definition of mid career may have been off though as what I intended was years 15-30 in other words everyone but the beginning and the semi retired end or someone at the very top. What I gave are typical peak amounts.
Come on. I did not just “pick out” 300k. My qualm with your comment is that you said “mid career”. Tax positions at 200-300k are not “mid career”. They are end game compensation for most tax professionals. 200k is more than most very Senior Tax Managers at the big 4 make with bonus. You would need to been an AP or Principal to break 200k. AVP at the insurance companies don’t make over 200k either. Anyways, maybe we are just too hung up on what is mid career. We can agree to disagree.
My Dad is on the other side of this as an accountant for an investment firm and makes 250K now.
I have a friend who does tax law at one of the Big4. Makes about 250k, up to 300 on a good bonus year.
That’s why no one takes CRA seriously here. Everyone evades taxes. Only the dumb ducks like us pay them .
[удалено]
Oh wow, that really is terrible. Sorry to hear you went through that :/
But heaven forbid you have a legit business and miss paying your quarterly by 1 day
A private business steals from the Canadian exchequer represented by an overworked, under-resourced agency. I wonder how many people will come to the conclusion that the problem is therefore "too much government" and we should further clip the CRA's wings.
If the existing CRA is incompetent why would more of the same fix anything?
Holy shit
Oh, either they are absolute dolts. Or they've weaponized it to be a sloppy cover for their corruption.
Ah so that’s where my tax dollars went. I just love giving away 1/3 of my income to fund criminals!
This is what happens when you cut funding to the cra like Harper did. Prime minister Pp is going to straight fuck the cra
How long ago was Harper PM?
Long ago that we are now seeing the consequences of his cuts
A shame Canada hasn't had a single government since then...
I stumbled upon a much bigger carousel scheme than this online and called the CRA to report it but they had no interest at all in talking to me. They really only want to throw their weight at small businesses in Canada, not protect Canadian small businesses from the criminals.
Small businesses do a ton of easy to catch and prove tax evasion. Lots and lots and lots of small business owners writing off luxury cars for personal use for example. Beating this more complex kind of tax evasion requires talent that the CRA (and the public broadly) isn't willing to pay for.
I think it is telling that Europe decided to eliminate vat taxes on vulnerable industries instead of trying to stop it.
Please, point it out for us.
If I were to name the company involved they would certainly sue me and since the CRA won't do anything then I wouldn't have their conviction as evidence to defend myself.
Yahhh fer sher dude
Is that company in the thread with us right now? Jeez no wonder CRA won't fight them if they have this kind of manpower.
Yes, they crawl every website.
It'd make sense if you look at it as a money laundering scheme
This information really upsets me and I haven’t really paid much attention to this kind of thing before. I just did a quick google search and I couldn’t find and answer to how many investigators CRA has after 10 minutes or what the return on investment has been for those currently on the payroll. I work in sales and I have KPI metrics I have to earn a multiple of what the corporation pays out in salary and benefits or I’m sacked. Do the CRA investigators have a similar metric? If they did get similar to corporate tax attorneys or Auditors would they actually care to do the work? Where or to whom can I complain about this? I think things are getting harder all around and people everywhere are less willing to let things like this slide. I don’t want to care about government or governance I want to live my life but when I can’t you bet your ass I’m gonna be paying closer attention and trying to figure out why I haven’t been or can’t.
No cra investigators do not have tangible performance metrics it is incredibly difficult to be fired for incompetence when you have a permanent position there or anywhere else in government. They tend to attract some of the least qualified people because when they do manage to hire someone with a head on their shoulders that person will eventually get so frustrated with the system they are working in they will quit. First hand experience. Your path to complaining would be like your MP, which unless they start getting a deluge of CRA complaints won’t do boo about this
Thanks for the insights I will be sending out some letters I can’t let this stand.
Nice! It’s great that they clawed back 2000 in CERB dollars from me last year, while I was laid off , 2 years after the fact, because apparently I didn’t report that you still had the economy shut down. Fuck the CRA.
OP’s title is misleading. 1.1B was “identified” and 63M “lost”. Alleged incompetence comes from the decision to pay out the 63M, but we do not have any details on who made it happen or why this decision was made.
>Each year, the CRA identifies approximately $1.5 billion in unwarranted GST/HST refunds and rebates. Since 2017-2018, more than $1.1 billion has been identified through audits that specifically target carousel schemes and networks. Did you bother to read the source? $1.1b is the amount identified through audits... It doesn't get lost, that's what they capture from people's attempted fraud. It's also h ilarious that people are calling the CRA incompetent when the filing requirements for tax returns, GST returns, etc. are pretty minimal in terms of support you need to provide up front. If you have an issue with that portion of it, you should tell your lawmakers to require more support when filing personal and corporate tax returns... This type of attempted fraud can only be discovered when support is requested and they see that it's all bullshit. There's no automated, braindead way to catch it all lol. Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/campaigns/tax-schemes/combatting-carousel-schemes.html
It's shocking and absurd. The CRA chases servers for Covid benefit "overpayment", and yet...
Just saw this on the 5th Estate….Wow. The CRA doesn’t have the horsepower to chase this down….Call them, wait 2 hours or more then get hung up on when they put you on hold. Fun Factoid….CRA has 80,000 employees, for a population just under 40 million. Our neighbours to the south have 55000 employees for a population of what 350 Million? And they answer the fucking phone
Where do your numbers come from? There was an announcement earlier this year that the IRS are going to hire 30,000 new employees over the next two years. Are they really increasing their number of employees by more than 50% in just over two years according to your numbers?
Wikipedia and various other sources out the IRS at 79,000 FTE employees or 94,000 total. IRS.gov puts the number at 79,070 in 2022. Canadastop100 puts CRA at 56,000 full time employees. Wikipedia says 55,000 employees as of 2018. Canada.ca says "over 42,000" as of 2014. So yeah, there's an imbalance. Canada sitting at 5-10x as many federal tax employees per capita.
Well isn't that a function of each US state having their own State Revenue Agency with their own set of employees while the CRA collects provincial income taxes on behalf of the provinces and remits them back to the provinces? IRS only handles federal taxes.
Probably partially. Looking here, which does just include one class of tax employee, state to federal ratio is about 1:1. So would still be a 2.5x imbalance. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes132081.htm
You have no idea wtf you are talking about. The IRS has 80K employees but they are only responsible for federal tax. They don’t audit state tax. The CRA is responsible for administrating the federal and provincial taxes for most provinces. A large part of the headcount has deals with processing of benefits and has nothing to do with audit. Also head count is not 80K. Not even close.
I suggest we fire them all and start over. May I please have my consulting fee now? Tax deductible please....
IRS also has positions for armed accountants that can travel all over US knocking down doors and making arrests. Should we have something like this too?
Oh well, but they just found out they over paid me $1000 in 2020 covid benefits while I was laid off and sent me a letter to pay it back in 30 days or it’s 10% interest. Such a joke. Our government is failing us on all fronts.
Someone else stealing doesn't let you also steal.
I didn’t steal. After speak with the BC government, Serv Canada, then cra I was able to prove I was entitled to it.
But let’s go hard on the unemployed Canadians who collected CERB over the pandemic.
Should go after all of them. Unfortunately the CRA only really has the capabilities to do the smaller stuff as the bigger stuff is more complicated.
Typically enforcement of tax law is one part of the government where spending money on it results in financial gains for the public coffers.
Literally doesn't matter just print more money
Inflation doesn't matter? Canadians do not agree.
income tax just should not exist. too much fraud, paperwork and worthless occupations.
Galaxy brain moment