[2020-11-06] CRA requested data on all clients Coinsquare

[Daltonik]

According to The National Post, Canada's tax agency is asking the court to oblige the country's leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinsquare to transfer the data of all its users since 2013.

The CRA sent a corresponding appeal – the first in the history of Canada-in September. In it, the Agency States that this information is necessary in order to make sure that Coinsquare customers "comply with their obligations" under the country's tax laws.

In other words, the CRA wants to check whether all customers have paid taxes and whether cryptocurrencies have been used to hide assets. It is assumed that this will be done on the basis of tax returns for previous years.

Tax lawyer David Piccolo explained that if discrepancies are found in relation to the trader, a larger audit may be initiated. He noted the importance of the CRA's appeal to the court, since this is the first active action on the part of the Agency aimed at obtaining such a large amount of information about the clients of the cryptocurrency exchange.

source: https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/cra-goes-after-client-details-of-major-canadian-cryptocurrency-marketplace-in-battle-against-underground-economy

[Lucius]

There is a saying that one cannot escape from two things in life, the first is death and the second is paying taxes. I believe that in this case, the Canadian government has every right to request all the information to determine if there are those who have not paid taxes - although they should have done so much earlier.

I know an identical case with Coinbase a few years ago, but I don't remember how they managed not to hand over all the data - so it's possible that something similar happened here, although I think US and Canadian laws probably differ in some things. However, it seems that the CRA has very serious intentions to put such things under control, because in 2018 they founded a special crypto unit that has already launched many investigations.

It will be interesting to see the outcome of this story, and yet the whole operation depends on the federal court and the judge who must make the decision.

[cr1776]

...
In other words, the CRA wants to check whether all customers have paid taxes and whether cryptocurrencies have been used to hide assets. It is assumed that this will be done on the basis of tax returns for previous years.
...

The authoritarians don't just want to know everything about you - cash, bitcoin etc is bad since it can't be tracked - the want your soul too.

Who knew that in Canada you were required to submit a list of assets and value every year.

[pixie85]

That's going to be a lot of data. If they try to go through every single trade they'll drown themselves in numbers.

Pretty sure they'll only go after fiat transfers from and to banks and target those with the highest amount of money moved through the exchange. If they were to go after every single person who ever moved a few thousand dollars to their bank they'd need many years to do so.

Another reason why you shouldn't do KYC

[Karartma1]

That's going to be a lot of data. If they try to go through every single trade they'll drown themselves in numbers.

Pretty sure they'll only go after fiat transfers from and to banks and target those with the highest amount of money moved through the exchange. If they were to go after every single person who ever moved a few thousand dollars to their bank they'd need many years to do so.

Another reason why you shouldn't do KYC

Exactly. They will probably go after those who moved more than a certain sum from the exchange to their bank account (without reporting them for tax purposes). Don't forget the others will stay monitored in the background for future raids. Once they have the data, it's done, unfortunately.