By Tony O''Riley-
Canadian corporations have been accused of dodging up to $11B in taxes in a year, according to a CRA report .
A Tax agency which examined data from 2014 tax year to assess role of corporations in tax leakage found that Canadian corporations managed to dodge paying roughly $10 billion in taxes in a single year. The Canada Revenue Agency(CRA) released its fifth and final report on the tax gap, laying its focus on corporate taxes. Previous reports examined factors such as sales tax fraud, domestic tax evasion, and the use of offshore tax havens in assessing the damage caused by the leakage of Canada’s taxation system has.
Tuesday’s report estimates that in the 2014 tax year, Canadian corporations managed to pay somewhere between $9.4 billion and $11.4 billion less than they should have in taxes. The CRA report says small companies avoided paying between $2.7 billion and $3.5 billion in taxes. Big companies, meanwhile, avoided paying between $6.7 billion and $7.9 billion.
The tax agency says it expects to recoup between 55 and 65 per cent of the corporate taxes it is owed for 2014. That brings Canada’s corporate tax gap bill down to $3.3 billion and $5.3 billion in 2014 It claims Ottawa didn’t collect almost one out of every $6 worth of corporate taxes it was entitled to that year — and that’s assuming they are able to recoup some of it. If they aren’t, the bill could go as high as almost one out of every four.
“Our government is committed to cracking down on tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance, in Canada and offshore,” Diane Lebouthillier, Canada’s minister of national revenue said.