Crack down on tax evaders.

What success looks like

A fairer tax system, and billions of dollars recovered from those who are evading taxes.

Government's narrative on progress

The CRA continues to crack down on tax evasion and avoidance through several means, including: • Targeting non-compliance in the highest-risk areas, such as wealthy individuals with offshore accounts. This has led to the doubling of the number of offshore audits since 2014. • Reviewing large money transfers between Canada and eight countries of concern—transactions worth over $177 billion that merited closer scrutiny were identified as of March 31, 2018. • Focusing on non-compliance in the underground economy by implementing the 2018-2021 Underground Economy Strategy • Aggressively pursuing those who promote tax avoidance schemes, and in 2017-2018, imposing approximately $48 million in penalties on these third parties. CRA’s audit programs identified a total of $13.6 billion in fiscal impact during 2017-2018, an increase of more than $1 billion from the previous year. This included $7.9 billion that was identified through the CRA's international, large business and offshore audit teams. The CRA also continues combatting tax evasion and money laundering through criminal investigations, and collaboration with domestic partners such as the RCMP and the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada as well as international partners. For example, in February 2019, the CRA executed search warrants in the greater Montréal and Toronto areas, proceeded with restraint orders of proceeds of crime and laid tax evasion charges as part of a joint criminal investigation with the RCMP targeting a money laundering and tax evasion scheme. To date, the estimated value of assets seized and restrained totals more than $32.8 million. Canada is one of more than 75 countries taking part in the OECD/G20 Country-by-Country Reporting Initiative, a collaborative approach that allows countries to share revenue and profit information on large multinational enterprises. The CRA published a series of studies on Canada's tax gap to inform the public on non-compliance and to deliver on the government’s commitment to transparency. The CRA is now one of the leaders in tax gap estimation amongst OECD countries. Budget 2019 further strengthens the CRA’s ability to combat tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance by investing more than $150 million in additional funding over five years, allowing the CRA to fund new initiatives and extend existing programs, including: • Hiring additional auditors, conducting outreach and building technical expertise to target non-compliance associated with cryptocurrency transactions and the digital economy; • Creating a new data quality examination team to ensure proper withholding, remitting and reporting of income earned by non-residents; • Extending programs aimed at combatting offshore non-compliance; and • Establishing real estate audit teams. To help the CRA stay ahead of non-compliance schemes driven by the use of new, advanced technologies, Budget 2019 proposes to invest more than $65 million over five years to improve the CRA’s information technology systems, including replacing legacy systems, so that the infrastructure used to fight tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance continues to evolve. In addition, Budget 2019 announced plans for incremental legislative change that would tighten some tax loopholes to combat tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance.

Note: this is the government's own description, not an independent assessment.