Canada’s Internal Revenue Service, the CRA, is determined to obtain the user data from Coinsquare.
The CRA wants to find out if Coinsquare’s crypto users have paid taxes on their profits in the last 7 years.
Until now, Coinsquare has not complied with this, which is why the CRA has decided to involve the courts to get what they want.
Canada’s tax authority, the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA), has tried to keep an eye out in the country for people who may have made profits from trading crypto. There is a strong suspicion that many have not paid their taxes on their crypto revenues, and so the CRA has taken legal action against the crypto exchange Coinsquare to force them to surrender seven years of user data.
The CRA is after Coinsquare users
Apparently, the CRA could not reach an agreement with Coinsquare alone, so it is now asking a judge to force the exchange to release the necessary information. Local reports say that the tax authorities are determined to find out if Coinsquare users have complied with their crypto-tax reporting obligations.
The country’s new tactic reflects what the IRS has done against Coinbase. Instead of checking every single citizen, it now turns to the data exchange and plans to obtain the data through the court.
But while the IRS’ request for information was relatively limited, the CRA wants to go back to 2013.
What did Coinsquare say?
Stacy Hoisak, Coinsquare’s CEO, explained that the exchange is not yet certain how to proceed. At the moment Coinsquare is still deciding how to respond to the CRA’s demands, which were originally made in September this year.
The fact that the Ontario Securities Commission already took action against Coinsquare in July because of the stock exchange’s falsified trading volume reports is unlikely to help the exchange in this situation.
Especially since Coinsquare’s senior executives admitted that they orchestrated a laundering deal and have since managed to reach an agreement whereby the company’s senior executives have resigned and paid heavy fines for their misconduct. It should be noted, however, that it is not clear whether the actions of the CRA are in any way related to this particular incident.
