Anyone else seeing clients come in with T4As for Covid benefits that they did not apply for?
With all the breaches that happened last year, seems that these benefits were open windows to fraudsters…and now the confusion is to whether claim or not claim the tax slip…and I guess that from what clients are telling us it depends on who you speak to at CRA. It’s clear that once the fraud has been confirmed that the T4A will end up being cancelled…but how long will that take and why should the taxpayer have to claim income that they didn’t receive…Oh Boy…what a fun Tax Season:-)
I had a lady bring me a T4A with CERB benefits paid to her for $4000.00 a few days ago. I told her to phone RC and get that settled with them as i had already filed her return.
Francois
Have you checked to see if the return was “assessed as filed”?
Once the tax return is assessed you can do a REFILE to include this slip OR you can do a T1 adjustment on line or on paper. She will not get this “settled” by calling CRA.
What made you believe that it was fraudulent? Did she say that she had not in fact received the benefits?
Yes…we’ve had many clients come in with T4As for Covid Benefits that they didn’t apply for. Some of these clients are aware that they’ve been frauded while some had no idea until they received that T4A.
Yes, it was.
Francois
She had problems in June as she did not get her OAS & CPP payments and phoned RC and they told her that there had been fraud in her account. I don’t see why she would have to pay taxes on money she did not get or on benefits she did not get. It’s their problem i think they should fix it.
Francois
Exactly.
Francois
So far I’ve had a number of clients who had not employment/self-employment income in 2019 or 2020, only social assistance benefits or no income whatsoever, yet they collected thousands of dollars of COVID-related benefits. When I asked them why they did so, they said because “everybody else was getting them” or “because I needed the money”. I’m just curious how the government is going to get those money back?
They won’t get it back, because the money is spent. I wonder how they were able to collect. $22,000 of Ontario Works and $14,000 CERB? It really was a bonus for them but now its gone.
On the plus side landlords were getting their rent.
On the negative side overdoses are up.
Yes, Arliss, my client said it went up in smoke.
My client just logged into her CRA account and noticed all her banking information had been changed to a fraudulent bank account! There were also CRB applications on the file. She called CRA and they took down the report and apparently they asked her some information about me! They asked if she had approved me and took down my phone number. I thought that was strange. We can not access banking information in RAC. Do they suspect the hack might be something to do with the representative? My account doesn’t appear to have been compromised.
My client is also wondering if she should call the police because she has a screen shot of the fake bank accounts. Wondering if anyone else has had an experience with this and what CRA ‘S investigation involves.
I prepared a return for a client about 10 years ago and when we went to efile it, we were advised that a return had already been processed for that client. Don’t take it personally. Some unscrupulous people send in returns for people to direct the refund elsewhere. This client couldn’t efile a return for the next couple years as I recall.