CRA has court order for Paypal account holders…

PayPal has been ordered to provide the Canada Revenue Agency with information about its business account holders. The company says a Federal Court order requires it to supply information about business accounts that received or sent a payment between Jan. 1, 2014, and Nov. 10, 2017.

It is not required to provide information about customers who have personal PayPal accounts. In an e-mail statement to The Globe and Mail, the company said: “We have informed affected customers and they can contact us if they have any queries. We have also shared information on our Help Centre to help them understand our reporting obligations. …

“This is a one-time disclosure of information to the CRA for Canadian PayPal Business Account holders that sent or received a payment between 2014 and 2017. This is not an on-going request for information,” it said. “The CRA regularly seeks court orders as part of its mandate under the Income Tax Act and the Excise Tax Act to compel organizations to disclose information related to an individual or business for tax reporting purposes. In the past, eBay Canada in 2009 and Square Canada in 2016 received similar Federal Court orders to disclose certain customer information to the CRA.”

PayPal has 6.4 million active customer account holders in Canada, including 250,000 active merchant customer accounts, which includes retailers of all sizes. The company said it can’t disclose how many are affected, but the vast majority of PayPal account holders in Canada are personal account holders.