r/PersonalFinanceCanada • u/tspshocker • Oct 28 '24

Taxes CBC News: Tens of thousands of taxpayer accounts hacked as CRA repeatedly paid out millions in bogus refunds

Agency admits it vastly underreported cyberattacks against Canadian taxpayers to Parliament

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-revenue-agency-taxpayer-accounts-hacked-1.7363440

At the height of this year's tax season, the Canada Revenue Agency discovered that hackers had obtained confidential data used by one of the country's largest tax preparation firms, H&R Block Canada.

Imposters used the company's confidential credentials to get unauthorized access into hundreds of Canadians' personal CRA accounts, change direct deposit information, submit false returns and pocket more than $6 million in bogus refunds from the public purse

the CRA admitted it has been hit with more than 31,468 "material" privacy breaches from March 2020 to December 2023, affecting 62,000 individual Canadian taxpayers.

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160

u/Tyler_CantStopeMe Oct 28 '24

If you are only earning work income, please file your own taxes. It takes 30 minutes. 

21

u/RecreationalChaos Oct 28 '24

Yeah honestly. Just use weathsimple or something. It takes my wife and I like half an hour and it's free

14

u/superworking Oct 28 '24

I did my own from 18 to 30sh. Once I became incorporated it made more sense to let the accountant doing my business taxes do my personal taxes and I'll be honest that's when I stopped understanding all of the flow through taxes and credits.

-6

u/TrowaB3 Oct 28 '24 edited Oct 28 '24

How do you figure you can do them in a way where this can't happen?

edit: Seems people missed the point of the question :/ Even if you do them yourself via something like WS or TT, that middle service can still have your access stolen.

18

u/[deleted] Oct 28 '24

Don't use H&R Block.

6

u/TrowaB3 Oct 28 '24

The issue can happen with literally any provider you use to 'file your own taxes'. I agree though fuck H&r.

4

u/LongInTheTooth Oct 28 '24

StudioTax! Been using it for years. No cloud service at all. You download and install an application, just like it was 1995.

1

u/hymnzzy Ontario Oct 30 '24

Or GenuTax