PBO says it cannot fully measure cost of tax avoidance due to incomplete data
OTTAWA — Parliament’s spending watchdog says he still does not have access to all the data his office needs to determine the amount of money the federal government loses each year to offshore tax havens and tax avoidance schemes.
Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux says the Canada Revenue Agency would only give his office aggregate tax data for a study his office has for years wanted to complete on Canada’s “tax gap,” the difference between how much tax revenue should have been collected in a year versus what was actually brought in.
The PBO needs more detailed data to fully measure the tax gap in Canada, Giroux said.