The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is advising Canadians to be aware of fraudulent communications that claim to be from the CRA. Taxpayers are being asked by telephone, mail, or email for personal information such as their SIN, banking information and passport numbers.
The communications claim that this personal information is needed so that the taxpayer can receive a refund or benefit payment. Another common scam refers the person to a website resembling the CRA’s where the person is asked to verify their identity by entering personal information. Taxpayers should not respond to such fraudulent communications.
Employees should be advised of the following:
- The CRA will not request personal information of any kind from a taxpayer by email.
- 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.
When in doubt, taxpayers should ask themselves the following:
- Am I expecting additional money from the CRA?
- Does this sound too good to be true?
- Is the requester asking for information I would not include with my tax return?
- Is the requester asking for information I know the CRA already has on file for me?
- How did the requester get my email address?
- Am I confident I know who is asking for the information?
As per fraudulent telephone calls, a telecommunications provider has recently been leaving messages for individuals and businesses to call the CRA at a 1-800 or 1-866 number. On dialing the number, callers are then asked to call another number at a cost to them. These telephone messages are not from the CRA and should be ignored. Taxpayers may verify the authenticity of a CRA telephone number by calling 1-800-O-Canada (622-6232).
Article taken from the Canada Revenue Agency web site (https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/cra-canada.html?utm_campaign=not-applicable&utm_medium=redirect&utm_source=cra-arc.gc.ca_redirect)