Shopify CEO promises to fight the request, calling the action ‘low-key overreach.’ Expert says data includes ‘everything the CRA needs to audit these businesses.’
I’m glad to see the CRA trying to be aggressive. Good business has nothing to hide. Other than the administrative headache, businesses should not fear being audited.
Agreed. Which is why I’m a little put off by the CEOs message on twitter:
I don’t particularly want a fight with the CRA (Canada’s tax authority)- but we got asked to backchannel them 6 years of records for all Canadian Shopify stores. This feels like low-key overreach to me. We will fight this.
I have mixed thoughts on this. On the one hand, yes, catching tax evaders is good, on the other hand it does feel like overreach to just force companies to give up their customer data without any specific target or specific suspicion of a wrongdoing.
As a secondary concern, in today’s political climate it is bad for business to have the government in your data. There’s going to be a ton of Americans who don’t read the details on this and assume the Canadian government has their data.
If the CRA wants to catch tax evaders I have a tip: call any literally contractor and ask if they offer a cash discount, 99.99% do, by not paying taxes. I doubt retail businesses with an HST number and a digital audit trail are flouting their taxes at anywhere near that rate.
Yeah I don’t know where he’s going with this or what exactly the “overreach” is. It’s the CRA, they’re allowed to look.
What does Shopify care if some customers are evading taxes? Why try and protect that? It’s probably all just grand-standing. I imagine they can delay in court but ultimately the CRA is not really “asking”.
This doesn’t bother me. If a Shopify vendor is pulling down enough money to be taxable, it should be in the CRA’s data ingest for verification.
Yeah I don’t know where he’s going with this or what exactly the “overreach” is. It’s the CRA, they’re allowed to look.
What does Shopify care if some customers are evading taxes? Why try and protect that? It’s all probably just grand-standing for their clients. I imagine they can delay in court but ultimately the CRA is not really “asking”.
