The Canada Revenue Agency says it has recovered more than $240 million from audits related to probes of tax cheating on real estate in British Columbia and Ontario.

According to figures published on the CRA’s website, the bulk of the money comes from probes in Ontario, where the federal department has recovered $210.4 million through more the 13,400 audits conducted between April 2015 and September 2016

More than 10,900 of those Ontario audits are related to the GST/HST New Housing and New Residential Rental Property rebates, and resulted in $143.9 million in recoveries.

Meanwhile, the CRA says it has recovered $30.3 million from 2,366 audits in British Columbia, with more than half of that money related to GST/HST fraud probes.

CRA has also imposed $12.5 million in penalties. In the event a taxpayer knowingly makes a false statement when filing a return, the CRA can apply a penalty equal to 50 per cent of the additional tax payable. Between April 2015 to September 2016, the CRA applied 663 penalties, with the biggest one hitting almost $2.5 million.

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/cra-audits-real-estate-1.3813584