“Though it’s often said the only certainties in life are death and taxes, some people were, until recently, pretty good at avoiding the latter. It wasn’t hard. All it took was a source of income that wasn’t entirely on the radar of the Canada Revenue Agency — tips earned from waiting tables, for instance, or selling used cars on Craigslist. Maybe they did day labour on construction sites, or flipped houses, or drove trucks or, ahem, wrote a few freelance articles.Whatever the case, all that unreported income has contributed to Canada’s underground economy — which, according to Statistics Canada, was worth about $35 billion in 2008, the most recent year for which numbers were available. In recent years, however, the Canada Revenue Agency has decided to try to rein in some of that undocumented economic activity.” Sean Davidson wrote for the CBC News. Davidson continued, “The taxman put in a lot of overtime — in the wilds of B.C., on the construction sites of the Prairies and in the restaurants of southern Ontario — searching for unaccounted-for cash in sectors where the bookkeeping is less than precise In Winnipeg, Regina and Saskatoon, the CRA found $339,000 in unpaid taxes among sub-contractors who did home renovation work in association with big retail stores.” Read the full article here. | Raymond Matt, CFP, CLU, TEP, CHS
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