CRA Takes Action To Enforce Tax Laws

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, Washington

09 January 2008

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) announced this week that it has employed a variety of tools to identify non-compliance and take action to address mistakes or tax cheating.

It explained that:

"The CRA is committed to promoting the integrity of the tax system through a number of compliance activities."

To this end, in 2006-2007, the CRA revealed, it had:

• Identified a total dollar value of non-compliance of about $12.7 billion, including almost $4.9 billion for international and large businesses;
• Obtained more than 800,000 returns from taxpayers who had not filed their returns;
• Made almost 820,000 adjustments to individual tax returns after comparing the information reported by taxpayers with data filed by third parties, such as employers;
• Reviewed more than 6,400 businesses to ensure they were maintaining proper books and records;
• Conducted over 393,000 audit and review actions, including 20,635 underground economy audits, and more than 1,300 investigations of taxpayers suspected of earning income from illegal activities;
• Undertook legal action that resulted in the conviction of 1,266 taxpayers who had not filed tax returns or not registered for goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST);
• Referred 259 income tax and GST/HST criminal investigations for prosecution. Of the prosecution cases completed in the past year, 98% resulted in convictions; and
• Recovered $9.7 billion through collections activities.

Recommended