Tax Specialists Brief your Clients About CRA Fraud And E-Mail
Scams It’s a warm
summer day. You’re relaxing in the yard and wondering what could possibly make
this day better. And then, out of the blue, you receive an e-mail from Canada
Revenue Agency stating that they’ve discovered they owe you money! Could
this be true? Or, do you need to wake up and smell the coffee . . .
.? There are two scams in particular to brief your clients about: Refund
and Collection Scams. Refund Scams. Even though hundreds of millions of
individuals use e-mail daily, CRA does not. So it’s pretty
much guaranteed that the e-mail you just received asking for your
banking information so that CRA can deposit the funds into your account, is not
legitimate. In fact, when you go to check that the funds have been
deposited, you will find that you have become a victim and all your funds are
gone. While scams like this are not new and have been happening probably as
long as there has been e-mail, they seem to have been especially aggressive
this year; CRA currently lists 22 variations of e-mail scams that are
being used to extract money from your clients fraudulently. In addition to e-mail schemes, scammers also use text messages, online
form submissions and, in some cases, good old snail mail! So, a key tax literacy message for your clients is this: CRA does not
communicate with taxpayers by electronic means outside of the “My Account” and “My
Business Account” portals on their website. Collection Scams. Reports of telephone calls purportedly
from CRA Collections have been making the news recently. According to the CRA
newsroom, these calls are very aggressive in nature and go as far as
threatening court charges, jail or deportation. The caller demands immediate payment
by credit card and, if no credit card exists, demands the immediate purchase of
a prepaid credit card. So what should your clients do if they receive one of these types of
communications? CRA recommends that anyone potentially the victim of a fraud ask
themselves these questions:
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