Thank you, Chair.
In 2018 the Auditor General identified offshore transactions as highly problematic. The Auditor General pointed out that with regular Canadians, small business owners and ordinary taxpayers, when the CRA would request a receipt or information to support a claim, the tax filer had 90 days to comply. The taxes would then be automatically assessed in the absence of the production of a document. However, for other taxpayers, such as those with offshore transactions, we found that the time frame to comply was extended for months or years.
It was the Auditor General's finding that offshore filers were given a break by the agency. After months or years of non-compliance with requests for information, taxes would simply be waived. I asked Commissioner Hamilton about this at a more recent meeting, when he was here in December. He didn't have any answer to my question about whether or not any real progress had been made.
Do we now have an even playing field between ordinary Canadian tax filers and offshore tax filers or those with offshore accounts?