Did you get a text with your SIN that claims to be from Canada Revenue Agency? It’s a scam | CBC News

Tax season is here and with it, a new scam. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre says the scam involves a text message, containing a person’s name and personal information, that appears to come from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). “We received reports of a text message claiming to be from the CRA which actually included the target or the victim’s social insurance number, advising that there is a payment due and requesting payment be sent to a provided phone number in the text message,” Jeff Horncastle, planning communications outreach officer at…

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‘They Already Have All The Freaking Information’: Federal Government Announces Plan To File Some People’s Taxes For Them | National Post

OTTAWA – The federal government wants the Canada Revenue Agency to start filing taxes for some Canadians, particularly those who are missing out on potentially crucial benefits. It was a short line in Wednesday’s throne speech that took all of eight seconds for Governor General Julie Payette to read, but the potential impact for some Canadians — particularly those who depend on certain benefits to make ends meet — was significant. “The Government will also work to introduce free, automatic tax filing for simple returns to ensure citizens receive the…

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CRA Cyberattacks Impacted Four Times As Many Accounts As Previously Believed | CTV News

OTTAWA — In a major update to the impact of a series of credential stuffing attacks on government websites including the Canada Revenue Agency, the country’s top information officer now says that “suspicious activities” have been found on 48,500 CRA user accounts. In August the CRA temporarily shut down its online services and applications after hackers used thousands of previously stolen usernames and passwords to fraudulently access government services in three separate but serious breaches, compromising the personal information of thousands. Read full story here: CRA Cyberattacks Impacted Four Times…

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U.S. Tax Rules Raising The Stakes For Canadian Residents With American Citizenship | CBC News

Many Canadian residents with U.S. citizenship could risk fines or the closure of their banking or investment accounts in the coming months if they don’t provide financial institutions with U.S. identification numbers, officials warn. Experts say that in some cases, financial institutions may close accounts rather than face fines for not providing U.S. social security or taxpayer identification numbers for clients who could be subject to U.S. income tax, such as dual citizens. That means the stakes are about to get higher for those who haven’t been filing returns and for “accidental Americans” — Canadians…

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Nearly A Million Canadian Bank Records Sent To IRS | CBC News

The number of banking records the Canadian government is sharing with U.S. tax authorities under a controversial information-sharing deal has increased sharply, CBC News has learned. The Canada Revenue Agency sent 900,000 financial records belonging to Canadian residents to the Internal Revenue Service in September — nearly a third more than it sent the previous year. The records were for the 2018 tax year. It also has updated the number of records shared for the 2017 tax year to 700,000 from the 600,000 originally reported. Read full story here: Nearly A…

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1.6 Million Canadian Banking Records Shared With IRS | CBC News

The Canadian government has shared more than 1.6 million Canadian banking records with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service since the start of a controversial information-sharing agreement in 2014, CBC News has learned. In 2016 and again in 2017, the Canada Revenue Agency provided the IRS with information on 600,000 Canadian bank accounts each year. That’s a sharp increase from the 300,000 records shared in 2015 and the 150,000 records shared in 2014, the year the sharing began. Read full story here: 1.6 Million Canadian Banking Records Shared With IRS |…

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Revenue Agency Falling Behind As Uncollected Taxes Owed Rise To $44 Billion | CBC News

The amount of tax that Canadians admit to owing Ottawa but haven’t paid rose to a record $43.8 billion this year, despite a Liberal government promise to “stabilize” that sum. And an internal Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) projection obtained by CBC News says the amount of unpaid tax owed is set to hit more than $47 billion by 2020. The steady increase in the tax debt — up by about $2 billion annually since the Liberals came to power — comes despite a major investment in the 2016 federal budget…

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Tax Worker Fired After Biggest Privacy Breach At Revenue Canada – Politics – CBC News

The Canada Revenue Agency has fired an employee for the biggest single privacy breach ever detected involving confidential taxpayer accounts. The employee improperly accessed the accounts of 38 taxpayers in detail, and briefly accessed another 1,264 accounts using a search function to find surnames and postal codes. The incident happened in an agency office in the Prairie region before March 23, 2016, when an investigation was launched, says an internal report. “No changes were made to any of the accounts,” says the document, obtained by CBC News under the Access…

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Some Canadian Bank Record Information Being Sent Directly To IRS – Politics – CBC News

Thousands of reports containing confidential Canadian banking information records have been sent directly to the U.S Internal Revenue Service, without the Canadian government’s knowledge. According to information obtained by CBC News under a U.S. Freedom of Information Act request, 31,574 such reports have been sent directly to Internal Revenue Service over the past two years under the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). That is in addition to about 469,827 reports that the Canada Revenue Agency has transferred to the IRS under a Canada-U.S. agreement negotiated in the wake of the adoption…

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