WARNING: Have you gotten a CRA e-mail recently?

Posted March 13, 2014

If you’ve recently received any form of communication appearing to originate from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), please respond with caution. There are individuals attempting to acquire personal information which then allows them to access victims’ accounts by identity theft. These scams offer a monetary benefit (such as a tax refund) but claim to only be redeemed upon providing information such as SIN numbers, passport numbers or credit card/bank information.

It should be noted that not all telephone calls claiming to be from the CRA are fraudulent since CRA representatives may call in order to address an issue. These calls can be legitimate and non-fraudulent, provided that the CRA representative properly identifies themselves (Name, Agent ID). However, all e-mails should be disregarded completely. Individuals should also beware of web pages resembling the CRA’s website asking to verify personal information.

Please note the following guidelines given by the CRA to further prepare you to single out such scams:

The CRA does not request personal information of any kind from a taxpayer by e-mail
The CRA will not divulge taxpayer information to another person unless formal authorization is provided by the taxpayer
The CRA will not leave any personal information on an answering machine

You can click here to see examples of such fraudulent communication requests or visit the CRA website at http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca to see how you can further protect yourself. You might also want to check out our previous post on What to do when the scary CRA calls you to become more equipped.

If you have further questions please feel free to contact us or your accountant. We can be reached at (416) 495-1098 or info@apbs.ca.

Tom Chow