CRA Takes Action to Enforce Tax Laws

You cannot avoid paying the taxes you owe by not filing a tax return, or by not reporting all of your income. The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) uses a variety of tools to identify non-compliance and take action to address tax cheating or mistakes.

The CRA has a number of compliance activities that it has committed to promoting the integrity of the tax system. In 2006-2007, the CRA:

• Recovered $9.7 billion through its collection activities;
• Identified a total dollar value of non-compliance of about $12.7 billion, including almost $4.9 billion for international and large businesses;
• Obtained more than 800,000 returns from taxpayers who had not filed their returns;
• Reviewed more than 6,400 businesses to ensure they were maintaining proper records;
• Made almost 820,000 adjustments to individual tax returns after comparing the information reported by taxpayers with data filed by third parties, such as employers;
• Conducted over 393,000 audit and review actions;
• Conducted 20,635 underground economy audits, and more than 1,300 investigations of taxpayers suspected of earning income from illegal activities;
• Undertook legal action that resulted in the conviction of 1,266 taxpayers who had not filed tax returns or not registered for goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST);
• Referred 259 income tax and GST/HST criminal investigations for prosecution. Of the prosecution cases completed in the past year, 98% resulted in convictions.

More information on the compliance activities the CRA undertook in the past year can be found in the 2006-2007 Annual Report to Parliament, available at www.cra.gc.ca/annualreport.