The CRA is jumping on hundreds of Canada’s top social media influencer’s pages, parsing their content to spot any obvious signs of wealth or gifts. Then, they open up the individual’s tax filings and compare what they see online with what the person previously declared as earnings.

“If somebody’s declaring less than $5,000, and they have a Mercedes Benz in their Instagram posts, it’s clear that there’s a question to be answered there,” said Ted Gallivan, Assistant Commissioner at the Canada Revenue Agency and head of the agency’s compliance programs branch, in an interview with the National Post.

Scrutinizing social media is only one of the new methods the CRA is using to tackle tax evasion or avoidance by individuals working in the platform economy, a vast and booming sector where Internet or mobile applications serve as the main medium for promoting and selling a product of service.

Though they applaud the CRA’s efforts, some experts wonder about the privacy and ethical issues when tax authorities start going through taxpayers’ social media.

CRA also uses two software tools called Chainalysis and Cypertrace that help it track cryptocurrency transactions — which can be used as payments on certain digital platforms — as well as detect potential fraud and money laundering.

The CRA is jumping on hundreds of Canada’s top social media influencer’s pages, parsing their content to spot any obvious signs of wealth or gifts. Then, they open up the individual’s tax filings and compare what they see online with what the person previously declared as earnings.

“If somebody’s declaring less than $5,000, and they have a Mercedes Benz in their Instagram posts, it’s clear that there’s a question to be answered there,” said Ted Gallivan, Assistant Commissioner at the Canada Revenue Agency and head of the agency’s compliance programs branch, in an interview with the National Post.

Scrutinizing social media is only one of the new methods the CRA is using to tackle tax evasion or avoidance by individuals working in the platform economy, a vast and booming sector where Internet or mobile applications serve as the main medium for promoting and selling a product of service.

Though they applaud the CRA’s efforts, some experts wonder about the privacy and ethical issues when tax authorities start going through taxpayers’ social media.

CRA also uses two software tools called Chainalysis and Cypertrace that help it track cryptocurrency transactions — which can be used as payments on certain digital platforms — as well as detect potential fraud and money laundering.

The CRA is jumping on hundreds of Canada’s top social media influencer’s pages, parsing their content to spot any obvious signs of wealth or gifts. Then, they open up the individual’s tax filings and compare what they see online with what the person previously declared as earnings.

“If somebody’s declaring less than $5,000, and they have a Mercedes Benz in their Instagram posts, it’s clear that there’s a question to be answered there,” said Ted Gallivan, Assistant Commissioner at the Canada Revenue Agency and head of the agency’s compliance programs branch, in an interview with the National Post.

Scrutinizing social media is only one of the new methods the CRA is using to tackle tax evasion or avoidance by individuals working in the platform economy, a vast and booming sector where Internet or mobile applications serve as the main medium for promoting and selling a product of service.

Though they applaud the CRA’s efforts, some experts wonder about the privacy and ethical issues when tax authorities start going through taxpayers’ social media.