Don’t be a victim of fraud

As you may have heard, there are several ways to make you fall as victim of fraud: by email, phone calls, text messages, on the mail, online and even in person.

You may think, “that’s never going to happen to me” but be careful, nobody is exempted to get cough in one these fraudulent activities.

Keep in mind that the people who wants to get money from you have creative methods to do it, in ways you can’t even imagine.

During this time of year one of the most popular fraud typologies involves taxes. You get a call from an individual identifying as an agent from CRA (even they provide false information such as employee ID number), in a rude way, they say you need to pay an amount of money because you did something wrong in your taxes. They talk to you with those kinds of “technical” words that you may don’t understand at once. Most people feel scare, because is the government calling you and you don t want to mess up with them. So for this reason, people go an pay whatever amount they say in order to avoid future problems with CRA.

In this kind of situation, don’t be afraid to ask as many question about their identity, write it down (just in case) and if you still don’t feel comfortable with the information provided, hang up and call CRA phone number listed in the website. Do not call any number provided by the individual who contacted you. Otherwise, if you are in doubt, you can call your tax advisor and let him/her know about it. For sure your accountant will know how to deal with this situation.

You can also find people telling you that they have a charity and you can make donations because right away (or at the end of the year) you’ll get a receipt to deduct it from your taxes. There are thousands of non-for-profit organizations out there but this doesn’t mean that they are registered as charities, so the receipt is not valid for taxes. You can go online and check if they are registered as charity. Go to www.cra-arc.gc.ca/chrts-gvng/lstngs/ and search for name. This is the easiest way to no get caught.

To be aware of this situations and more, visit www.cra-arc.gc.ca/scrty and read all the scam stories they know.

If you have questions about this or more, contact us we will be more than glad to help you.

#tax #fraud #CRA #contact