Finance committee  Part of our approach to tax shelters is to communicate our position on them quite widely, and on the CRA Internet site we do provide quite a bit of information to people in terms of the kinds of considerations they should take into account in deciding whether to invest in a tax s

Finance committee  It is definitely on the website.

Finance committee  I'll give it a try. In terms of tax shelters, there's a requirement under the Income Tax Act for all tax shelters to be registered with the agency. That's done in order for us to be aware of the existence of a tax shelter. There are quite severe penalties if they're not register

Finance committee  Our largest audit coverage is with large corporations. Of the large corporations we audit, virtually all of their tax returns are filed on a biannual basis, so every second year we'll audit two years' worth of corporate tax returns. We do this taking into account the complexity o

Finance committee  We have noticed a significant increase in cases referred since the introduction of the money laundering act.

Finance committee  It's not an area I'm personally familiar with. I wouldn't want to mislead you. I know there are certain provisions in the money laundering act, and both provisions have to be met before a referral can be made to the agency. I don't quite recollect all of the details, but because

Finance committee  We recognize that refund overpayments are a key area of risk for tax administration, for any country with a value-added tax system. It's one we pay a particular amount of attention to. Over the years we have greatly enhanced our registration review process, in the belief that if

Finance committee  In 1996, the Department of Finance did announce certain measures to tighten the migration rules for individuals, including trusts, who emigrated from Canada, and these received royal assent in 2001 and were retroactive to 1996. Essentially, under the new rules, people who leave

Finance committee  They have the choice of either paying the full tax involved or else providing security that is sufficient to cover the amount of tax. So it wouldn't be for the value of the property; it would be for the value of the tax that would be owing.

Finance committee  Do you mean if they pay the tax at the time of emigrating?

Finance committee  My understanding--and I can be corrected by my colleague from the accounts receivable area--is that there is no time limit. The monitoring and the tracking will continue.

Finance committee  I'm sorry. I missed the translation completely. Oh, there was no translation.

Finance committee  There are certainly different theories and conjectures about the relationship between GST and the underground economy. Many academics have noted that in their belief the underground economy increased at the point in time when the GST was introduced. I don't know of anything defin

Finance committee  We follow the academic studies quite closely, because we're quite interested in them, but I'm not aware of anything of that nature that identifies a sweet spot like that.