Evidence of meeting #218 for Finance in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A video is available from Parliament.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
It costs you nothing to leave that information online. It expends no additional resources to leave it online.
Yet coincidentally, one week after Ms. Krause's testimony here, when she used that information to expose corruption and misuse of the charitable tax system, your agency just decided to make that 10 years of information—a million records—vanish from the Internet, and you expect us to believe that it is just a coincidence.
11:55 a.m.
Commissioner of Revenue and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Revenue Agency
Mr. Chair, I totally expect you to believe that because it's true. What I would say is that—
11:55 a.m.
Commissioner of Revenue and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Revenue Agency
—if you're talking about an area where something inappropriate is happening with some part of the tax system, including charities, charitable foundations, there's no one more interested in finding out about that than we are. All of the efforts we talked about, about the additional resources we're putting into looking at high-net-worth individuals and issues of tax evasion, we want to be able to use. We would not in any way have the reaction that, oh, because something came into the public domain, we would take it off the website if it were appropriate. This was simply a matter of efficiency, of putting the information on the site that is most used by people, and of making sure, as I said, that the additional information that was taken down, the 10 years, is still accessible.
Noon
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Thank you all.
Ms. Rudd, you have five minutes, and then we will move over to Mr. Kelly.
Noon
Liberal
Kim Rudd Liberal Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you for coming.
Just to follow up on my colleague's point, from what year going forward is that information now available? You said five years; so is it 2013, 2014?
Noon
Commissioner of Revenue and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Revenue Agency
I assume so, that it's five years. I'd have to go back and check on the specifics about it.
Noon
Liberal
Kim Rudd Liberal Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON
But that's five years from today, so from at least 2014.
Noon
Commissioner of Revenue and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Revenue Agency
Yes, it's five years.
Noon
Liberal
Kim Rudd Liberal Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON
Okay. The date is important.
I want to talk about some of the work you're doing that actually relates to the average Canadian. In my riding we certainly have the community tax program that is used widely, in particular by low-income Canadians and seniors.
I'm going to ask a couple of questions. I have only five minutes, so maybe if I put them together you can answer them together. That program is extremely important. You mentioned money within the estimates to enhance that program with regard to training and availability. I wonder what the benefit is, not just to Canadians but to the CRA. I assume it's that you get accurate returns and not errors in returns when people don't completely understand the system. I'd like to know what supports there are and why it's important that you continue to do that work.
With regard to the Canada workers benefit, you mentioned accessibility for low-income workers, and being able to access it through the CRA portal. Is there another way? One thing we're doing as a government is ensuring that people receive the Canada pension, as an example, when they're supposed to receive it, and other benefits that they wouldn't necessarily know they're eligible for and have to apply for. In what other way can they access the Canada workers benefit if they don't have access to the Internet?
The third question, quickly, is on the pilot program. You did a pilot program with dedicated lines for tax preparers, which frankly, I think is a great idea, given the fact that again they are the ones who are going to be providing accurate or mostly accurate tax returns to you because they are the experts, and they are completing the returns. What difference has that made in terms of those tax preparers being able to get that information into CRA and being able to serve more Canadians? Could you maybe just give us an overview of that?
Noon
Commissioner of Revenue and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Revenue Agency
Okay. I'll try to address all three of those, Chair.
The first thing that I would say is on the community volunteer income tax program, the CVITP. It's very important, certainly for Canadians who are looking to file their taxes; but you're right, in that it does have a benefit for us as well, to the extent that we get more accurate forms that comply with what we need to have.
It's actually a part of our efforts to try to make sure that people who should file their return file it, both to pay the appropriate taxes but, in many cases, to ensure that they get the benefits they're entitled to. In a number of cases, to get the benefit, you have to file a tax return. If someone in a vulnerable population is not doing that, they may not be getting the benefits they're owed.
We have a number of initiatives, including the CVITP, to get out and help people, and I think that's part of what you're seeing with the agency. We're trying to become more helpful in getting voluntary compliance, long-term compliance, and the CVITP is very important. We have volunteers whom we help who go to communities and have sessions on how to fill out tax forms. They can't fill out the forms for them, but they can certainly provide all the information and make sure everybody is aware of it.
It has been a big success. It has resulted in a lot more people being able to file and, in a lot of those cases, it's to get benefits that they're entitled to, so that's very important.
There's a similar issue with the Canada workers benefit, another tax incentive that people are eligible for and that provides an incentive for people to get back into the workplace. We have to find a way, though, to make sure that even though it's administered through the tax system, people are aware of it and are getting it. We've actually instituted a system that makes it more automatic, so that all you have to do is file your return without the additional information, and we will start to process that for you.
We're in the process of instituting those changes. That's just going to make it easier for people to get the benefits. The idea is that it's wonderful to have these benefits and to deliver through the tax system, but if people aren't aware of them or they aren't filing, they might not be getting them. We have quite an effort to go through, and this would include in indigenous communities across the country.
On the tax professionals, it's interesting. If you look at the calls and requests we get, they range from very simple ones, as I might call them—what's the filing date?—all the way through the spectrum to some very complicated questions.
On the ones that come from tax professionals, they know the tax system well. They have a degree of sophistication in their questions that we need to respond to, so lumping them in with everybody's calls can inhibit their ability to get through to an agent. We've piloted this dedicated line, recognizing that a different type of question comes from tax professionals and that a number of people—quite a few—use tax professionals to file their return. We think that by focusing on this and having that information flow be more efficient, it's actually going to help a number of Canadians get their tax returns filed accurately and on time.
June 11th, 2019 / 12:05 p.m.
Liberal
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
Thank you.
The minister claimed in 2017 that “[t]ax cheats can no longer hide”, yet in this year, 2019, we've seen a single unknown mystery taxpayer have a $133-million tax debt written off, and we now have witnessed that KPMG and their clients received a secret out-of-court settlement in response to a scheme wherein KPMG received a reported 15% cut of the taxes that were avoided.
How can the department possibly reconcile its statement that tax cheats are no longer able to hide when we repeatedly see secret deals being cut and taxpayers being able to hide their identities, as well as avoid paying taxes?
12:05 p.m.
Commissioner of Revenue and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Revenue Agency
Mr. Chair, I'll comment on the two parts of that.
First, on the debt writeoffs, it is true that each year in the agency we have a certain number of tax debts that we have to write off. That can come from a number of different reasons. There can be bankruptcies. There can be people who are in financial hardship, where we defer, or in some cases we eliminate their tax liability. In some cases, we just aren't able to execute the collection of those activities.
We make every effort to do that. We have a detailed process, much like you might find in a bank or somewhere, on what to write off versus what to keep alive. At some point, we come to a decision that says it is not collectible and we're going to write it off. It doesn't mean that we couldn't come back at some point if new information became available, but we write it off in that year. We have a fairly transparent process—not talking about specific taxpayers, again, as I mentioned earlier—describing how much we write off in a particular year. Those writeoffs can come for a variety of reasons, and we just make sure that we have a good process to deal with them. That's one of your questions.
On the second question referring to the settlement, I guess I would just add a couple of things on that. Sometimes we may take a leap to say that there was a settlement as meaning there was no tax collected, and I just think that's the wrong interpretation.
I want to clarify that when we go in, in this particular case you're referring to, in front of a judge, we have a process that involves the Department of Justice to determine whether there is an outcome that is consistent with the law that we can agree to.
In that circumstance, confidentiality provisions preclude us from talking about it, and that is one thing on which we and the minister agree. The settlements are a necessary part of our activity, but we would like to have a more transparent process—
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
12:05 p.m.
Commissioner of Revenue and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Revenue Agency
—and to try to find a way to balance the section 241 obligations with transparency.
12:05 p.m.
Commissioner of Revenue and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Revenue Agency
Hopefully we'll be able to do something there.
12:05 p.m.
Commissioner of Revenue and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Revenue Agency
There's one quick thing to add—I'm sorry—just in response to the earlier questions about the minister's engagement. I can say that she was not involved and engaged in this decision at all. She was informed about it after the decision was made. I wasn't sure if that was 100% clear in the commentary and questions, but I wanted to say that.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
We'll give you extra time, Pat. The commissioner took a minute longer.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The minister did claim, boldly, that tax cheats can no longer hide, and yet you say that it is beyond her ability, because she is independent of the prosecutorial decision...and that tax cheaters will continue not to be named. Your lengthy explanation is no comfort to Canadians who still see a set of, presumably wealthy, Canadians who received a settlement.
The question that is unanswered is whether or not taxes were paid. Canadians don't know that.
This is not consistent with the repeated assertions of transparency. You've spoken of transparency, sir, but we see none. We see unnamed taxpayers cutting deals with the CRA.
Back to the case of the single taxpayer and the $133 million, a right to privacy is not absolute. There are public interests as well that have to be considered. If this single taxpayer, for example, were a corporate entity that received a subsidy from the government or that had dealings with the government, there would be an overwhelming public interest, I would imagine. What are you actually doing to increase transparency so that we don't continually have cases of non-transparent settlements being made with taxpayers?