It began 10 years ago when a German journalist received a message from an anonymous sender: “Hello. This is John Doe. Interested in the data?”
A few days and months later was a leak of more than 11 million documents from Panama law firms – a leak known as Panama documents Revealed to the world in April 2016.
Confidential documents reveal hidden bank accounts, billions of dollars in shady currency traffic, and thousands of true owners of offshore Shell companies based on the British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas and Panama itself. The leak also attracted the attention of the world’s tax agencies, keenly aware that where there is hidden money, there is usually no pay tax.
Now, almost nine years after the first public reports on the Panama document, twenty of these national tax agencies said they had collected $1.86 billion in tax arrears and fines due to the information in the leak.
However, the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) is not included. And its Latest figures Prove that it has evaluated the results of the Panama paper-linked audit assessed $83 million in taxes and fines, and the CRA said unlike many other jurisdictions, it does not track how much it actually collects.
The global fiscal impact of the Panama document may be higher, as tax agencies in many countries do not leak exact numbers, while some other countries like the CRA can only say how much they have determined their debts, rather than how much they actually recovered.
The Talley is compiled by the International Resporgeative Remessists, a Washington-based organization that coordinates original reports on Panama papers by 100 global media outlets, including CBC News.
The Swedish tax agency told reporters that it has recovered more than $300 million in lack of tax since 2021, with France bringing $297 million, while Spanish tax collectors have recovered $250 million from previously unannounced assets and revenues.
CRA review is still ongoing
In Canada, federal agents have completed 310 reviews of people and entities designated in Panama documents, CRA said. Still inspecting over 130 files – nine years after leaks.
“It can take several years to complete these audits because a large number of taxpayers use various delay strategies or refuse to hand over the requested information, requiring the CRA to use other tools to obtain it,” the CRA said in a statement to La Presse and CBC News. “Some have also resorted to competing with the agency in court, resulting in both time-consuming and complex audits.”
It is worth noting that the agency has not filed any criminal tax evasion charges in relation to the Panama papers. It said it did launch six criminal investigations. The three were closed, no charges were made, and the other three were still in progress.
“If there are three prosecutions across Canada – three prosecutions, for example, that’s a pathetic,” said Jonathan Farrar, a tax accounting professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario.
Overall, the CRA has filed fewer criminal cases in recent years. It filed criminal charges in 33 cases in the fiscal year 2019-20, down to 28 in 2022-23 and only 7 in 2023-24. Similarly, despite the agency’s execution of 196 search warrants in 2019-20, the figures fell to 2022-23 and 59 last year.
” Rather than sending a warning message or a shot on the bow, where the CRA takes these blatant tax avoidance cases seriously against these blatant tax avoidance cases, the message seems to be, ‘OK,’ Well, you know, you can try to do whatever you want and you might take something away.’
More than $40 million assessed in Quebec
Revenu Québec said the Panama papers had led to the discovery of $41.4 million in unpaid taxes as of last fall. At least $30 million of these have been collected, but the exact amount cannot be specified from the figures provided by Québec Egyptian Québec.
Both CRA and Revenu Québec said that due to another big leak of information, they also found taxes, Paradiseit appeared in November 2017.
The CRA said it assessed $6.8 million in taxes and fines due to the paradise document, while the figure for Quebec, Egypt, Quebec was $16.1 million.
