Читать книгу Tax Survival for Canadians - Dale Barrett - Страница 14

Sometimes the CRA launches an investigation into a group of people it doesn’t even know the names of yet. It used to be a well-established law that if the CRA wanted information about known taxpayers, it could simply issue a requirement to produce such information and serve it upon those third parties it believed would have the information. However, until recently, the CRA was not investigating groups of unknown people so the law on the matter had not yet developed.

One case that was the focus of a lot of public attention involved the CRA’s demands for eBay Canada to produce records and documents relating to Canadian “Power Sellers.” The CRA wanted to verify whether these Power Sellers, who have notoriety on eBay for high sales volumes, had reported all of their eBay income on their returns. Based on the decision in a similar case where the CRA had obtained a court order requiring the Greater Montreal Real Estate Board to provide information regarding real estate agent members, eBay ended up providing the information requested.

In the Greater Montreal Real Estate Board case, the CRA initially obtained a court order for a list of the names of all the agent members including a list of properties sold by each. The CRA was investigating what it believed was widespread failure of real estate agents to report all their commissions. Rejecting the challenge mounted by the Real Estate Board, the Federal Court of Appeal noted that section 231.2 of the Income Tax Act permitted the CRA to conduct “fishing expeditions” as long as the necessary court orders or warrants were obtained.