CRA must do more to warn consumers of scams in its name
“(Your 2016 tax refund notification) Canada Revenue Claim 2017834 **** : Investigation Started ref http://cra-cor00. com”.
Or how about: “(Your 2016 tax refund notification) You have a pending tax refund of $428.18 to claim please complete form here: http://cra-arc-ggc.info”.
Or: “Canada revenue has sent you an interac e-transfer. Click here to deposit some of your income tax return: http://secureetransfer-refund.ml”.
It is not only the uneducated or the financially unsophisticated members of our population who fall for these fraudulent come-ons from criminal elements in foreign countries, or maybe even within Canada.
Should we all be aware that Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) does not contact taxpayers in this manner? Has CRA done enough to ensure that we are sufficiently informed in this regard? Their short press releases, here and there, are definitely not adequate to keep us adequately informed, on a continuous and timely basis, of the many scams that are perpetrated in their name.
While the absence of appropriate punctuation and capitalization may be a dead giveaway to some, there are many of us nowadays who, thanks to a lack of focus within our school systems, could not find a single grammatical problem with any of the foregoing.
In the event that you have not yet identified a problem, the above are not from CRA! They are a form of “mass mailout” that scammers rely on to supply them with a continuous flow of people who actually fall for the scam, out of the many hundreds or thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of people initially contacted.
These communications are sent in much the same manner as those other communications which our trusted service providers may text/mail themselves all the time, such as the “reminders” about letting friends and family know what you are up to, on a never-ending basis.
The answer that we should all be demanding is why our service providers are unable, or unwilling, to identify the fraudulent mass mailouts, and to take the necessary actions to prevent them from ever reaching us.
Why do we have to see stories on some investigative journalism program as to how some poor soul has been scammed out of $25,000 (in prepaid itune cards, no less) as a result of responding to, and believing, one of these con artists? And this individual is just one out of a great many, as evidenced by such ongoing fraudulent contacts.
CRA knows it is fraud. The service providers know it is fraud. And yet it is allowed to continue.
How difficult would it be for them to develop software that identifies such mass communications and eliminates it from the service system? Your own computer system can identify junk mail for your subsequent review and, if truly junk, for deletion from your system. Are the computerized systems of service providers less sophisticated than your own computer? If so, we are in trouble.
If not, is there another reason that these scams are not removed? Is there a revenue element that the service providers do not want to forego? If that is the case, the service providers should be held legally and criminally accountable and responsible for any and all losses incurred as a result thereof.
CRA has an obligation to ensure that taxpayers are adequately informed, on a reasonable and ongoing basis, of any fraudulent activity being carried out in its name. And publishing a reference to some section of the Income Tax Act does not constitute “adequately informed.”
Service providers have an obligation to ensure that their services are as free from fraudulent activity as is practicable and, in those instances in which their services continue to be deficient for some reason, to disclose the deficiency in those services.
Anything less is not acceptable. Delays, in providing improved services, are not acceptable.
Dave Randell Mount Pearl
CRA has an obligation to ensure that taxpayers are adequately informed, on a reasonable and ongoing basis, of any fraudulent activity being carried out in its name.