CANADA REVENUE AGENCY (CRA) PHONE SCAM

CRA will not phone you about owing money! If there is ever any tax money outstanding on your personal or business account, CRA will send a letter to your home address they have on file. You will get a brown envelope asking you to call them first. If someone calls you from the “CRA” most likely it is a phone scam.

Common Phone Scam Tactics:

Extremely aggressive speech. They’ll try to make you panic over your finances. (A government agency would never conduct itself like a high-pressure salesman!)
Threats to arrest you or get the police to go to your home if you don’t pay ASAP (CRA has no power to do this.)
Telling you not to talk to anyone else while you’re on the phone with the scammer (entrapment)
Telling you to go straight home to look up personal/banking information
They will hang up on you first if it sounds like you’re not complying, or are too suspicious of them
Scammers may also try similar methods with text messages and emails

Protect Yourself and Your Personal Information:

Do not disclose your SIN or BN (CRA already has this on file, they wouldn’t ask for it on the phone)
Do not disclose information about your bank account numbers, credit cards, etc.
If you receive a scam phone call (or what you suspect might be one), report it to the police or the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (contact info below)
You can call CRA yourself and ask if anything is wrong with your account (contact info below)
Tell them to call your Rep – that’s us – don’t tell them who your rep is the real CRA knows and they have no problem calling us to work through issues.
- If we have done your taxes we are on your account as a Rep.
- If we do your business books we got you to fill out the RC59 and we are your Rep.
If you really do owe money we have ways to pay it without giving the CRA any information- they do not want it over the phone anyway.