A Charlottetown cake-maker disputes a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency saying she wasn’t eligible to receive the Canada emergency response benefit and should pay back the money by year’s end to avoid tax complications. The dispute involves net versus gross income.
TL;DR: seems that there was no obvious (according the lady here, and the CBC’s looky-loo) indication that GROSS income was the thing you had to evaluate (had to make >$5k GROSS in 2019), but she reduced her income (via legal deductions, supposedly) below $5K, so CRA sent a “gimme back” letter.
My bet: CRA will give up on all but the most obvious frauds. If I recall, the probably incorrect ~800K offenders account for ~$1.7B of all the covid-19 relief spending (of ~$185B ??).
Note that ~800K taking $9K = $7. 2B, so the 1.7B number is likely off.
Is this a “morall hazard” thing? Simply letting people off will encourage dishonesty. Similar to how student debt can’t be forgiven?
