Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse
On November 25, 2016, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice found Abid Okadia, born July 8, 1954, the owner and operator of OK Tax Services in Toronto, liable for defrauding a Scarborough couple out of for $90,200.
Mr. Okadia was also ordered to pay punitive damages of $5,000, and the victim’s legal expenses in the amount of $18,500. In addition to this debt of $113,700.00, Mr. Okadia was ordered to account for what he did with the victim’s money.
Read more at Canadian Fraud News
A new Fraser Institute report — The Effect of Canadian Families of Changes to Federal Income Tax and CPP Payroll Tax — says more than 90% of Canadian families will pay higher taxes once the Canada Pension Plan tax increases are fully implemented by 2025. The first of seven increases to CPP tax — which all workers much pay — begins January 2019. The study’s co-author, Charles Lammam, talks about the impact on middle-class families.
Read more at Toronto Sun
A dozen governments around the world say they’ve recovered a combined $500 million in unpaid taxes so far thanks to the Panama Papers leak of tax-haven financial records in 2016.
But not a penny of that is destined for Canadian government coffers. The Canada Revenue Agency maintains it will be at least another 2½ years before it will have an idea of how much it might recoup.
Read more at CBC News
CHATHAM — Paid to do nothing, a senior Chatham-Kent police officer has quit the force after costing taxpayers nearly $400,000 in pay for the more than three years that he was suspended from the job.
The departure of Sgt. Robert Mugridge, announced Wednesday, comes days before the 29-year veteran of the force is to face the sentencing music in court for fraud and is certain to renew calls for Ontario to hurry up legislation ending its distinction as the only province where officers facing serious charges cannot be suspended without pay. It also comes ahead of a disciplinary hearing where Mugridge faced almost certain termination from the Chatham-Kent force.
Read more at National Post
Residents of some of the North Shore’s most exclusive neighbourhoods may have some ’splaining to the taxman to do if their reported income does not appear to support their affluent lifestyles.
The Canada Revenue Agency’s Postal Code Project is targeting five wealthy neighbourhoods across the country – including one in the Lower Mainland – to start taking a closer look at residents’ tax filings.
Read more at North Shore News
For every dollar corporations pay to the Canadian government in income tax, people pay $3.50. The proportion of the public budget funded by personal income taxes has never been greater.
At a time when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made tax fairness a centrepiece of his government, the Toronto Star and Corporate Knights magazine spent six months poring over tax data to determine how much income tax corporations are really paying.
Read more at Toronto Star
WASHINGTON
States nationwide are losing billions of dollars in sales tax revenue to restaurants and other businesses that deploy high-tech methods to evade tax collectors, including cloud-based computing systems originating in Canada, China and other foreign countries.
The cross-border fraud is depriving U.S. states of money they could be using for education, law enforcement and other services. But to date, there’s been little coordinated attempt to root out the offshore operators that assist rogue retailers in under-reporting their sales, especially those handled in cash.
Read more at The Sacramento Bee
About 240,000 low-income Canadians eligible for millions of dollars in federal support payments aren’t getting the cash, partly because the Canada Revenue Agency paperwork is too complicated.
That’s the tentative conclusion of a Finance Canada review of a vaunted poverty-reduction measure, the Working Income Tax Benefit (WITB), a program that is a decade old this year.
Read more at CBC News
OTTAWA – Canada’s tax collectors often aren’t picking up the phone, and when they do, Canadians are being given incorrect information, a new federal audit reveals.
The examination by Canada’s Auditor General Michael Ferguson into whether the Canada Revenue Agency’s nine call centres were providing Canadian taxpayers with timely access to accurate information, found that call centre agents only answered the phone about one-third of the time.
When the callers do get through to the call centre, the audit found that agents are giving Canadians incorrect information nearly 30 per cent of the time.
Read more at CTV News
The Federal Court of Canada has ordered U.S.-based PayPal to hand over details about its business account customers to Canadian tax authorities.
The court order, obtained by the Canada Revenue Agency, forces the U.S.-based payment processing firm to release information about Canadians with PayPal business accounts who processed transactions between the start of 2014 and last Friday.
Read more at CBC News