Canada Revenue Agency Email and Telephone Scams

For the past few months, Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has issued warnings related to a telephone/email scam that claims to be from the CRA but in reality, is not. Unfortunately, these are phishing and other fraudulent scam which can result in identity and financial theft.Please be aware of any scam that are asking for personal information such as follows;

• Credit card information,
• Bank account, and
• Passport numbers.

Email scams – These usually includes a link in the email directing to a website that is similar to that of the CRA , asking you to enter personal information.Telephone scams - These involve threatening individuals to pay fictitious debt to the CRA and forcing to settle it as soon as possible.What steps can you take when you suspect such scams?If any of these calls come in, please document agent’s name, agent’s CRA identification number and telephone number to call back.  After you hang up, call CRA back immediately.   For your convenience, we are providing the following telephone numbers to call;

• For Business           1-800-959-5525
• For Individuals       1-800-959-8281

To report a fraudulent telephone or email scam, contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at www.antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca or toll free at 1-888-495-8501.CRA has also provided the following guideline to identify possible scam:What CRA will never do?

• They will never asks for information about your passport, health card, or driver’s license;
• They will never share your taxpayer information with another person, unless you have provided the appropriate authorization; and
• They will never leave personal information on your answering machine or ask you to leave a message containing your personal information on an answering machine.

Questions to ask yourself If you are in doubt, please ask yourself the following questions:

• Am I expecting money from the CRA?
• Does this sound too good to be true?
• Is the requester asking for information I would not include with my tax return?
• Is the requester asking for information I know the CRA already has on file for me?
• How did the requester get my email address or telephone number?
• Am I confident I know who is asking for the information?
• Is there a reason that the CRA may be calling? Do I have a tax balance outstanding?

Under the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, the CRA protects the confidentiality of taxpayer information. For further information about the security of taxpayer data and other examples of fraudulent communication, please go to www.cra.gc.ca/security.We will be sharing update news on our social media pages.  If you like to follow these updates, please join us on any of our social media pages.