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Litigation, Taxation law

Voluntary Disclosures: changes are coming, but when?

Feb 24th, 2017

On December 8, 2016, the Offshore Compliance Advisory Committee of the Canada Revenue Agency (“CRA”) released its report on the Voluntary Disclosures Program (“VDP”), which recommended various changes generally aimed at narrowing the scope and relief applicable under the VDP.  In response, the CRA issued an immediate press release which stated: “The Minister and CRA will leverage the OCAC’s recommendations to review the VDP parameters.  Changes will be communicated in late 2017.” 

While changes to the VDP are thus expected, they will not occur overnight as the implementation of any proposed changes is to be preceded by a public consultation process.  This was confirmed in the email below we received this week from the office of the Assistant Commissioner, International, Large Business and Investigations Branch of the CRA:

Good afternoon Mr. Sohmer,

I am writing to you on behalf of Mr. Gallivan, Assistant Commissioner, International, Large Business and Investigations Branch of the Canada Revenue Agency.

Thank you for sharing your article “Canada’s Voluntary Disclosure Program: If It Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It” with our office; we appreciate the time you took to do this. You may be interested to know that we do plan on sharing any proposed changes to the Voluntary Disclosures Program with the public, for consultation. The timeline has not yet been finalized, but we do feel this is a critical step, and we encourage you to participate when the consultation period does open.


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