Idiot Extraoirdinaire - Canada Revenue Agency

[evensgrey]

Unfortunately, the only thing I could find online about it is a tweet from the interviewer:

https://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=JulieIreton

CBC had an interview about it, but it hasn't made it onto their web site (yet, at least).

Back in 2010, Heather Gilbert, a PhD candidate, got about $45000 in scholarships. Due to an error by her tax preparer, her T2202 form (used to report education-related tax information) was omitted from her tax return, so she was incorrectly assessed ~$11000 income tax on those scholarships. (In Canada, scholarships are not subject to income tax.) Normally, this would be a simple matter of filing an amendment to her tax return to add the missing form, which is a quite routine matter (and, incidentally, the rules specify you may do at any time, without any penalty, as long as the change is in your favor, and amendments that correct errors that wrongly decreased your tax liability are not subject to any penalty beyond having to pay interest on the additional tax as long as there was not already a proceeding against you for the irregularity being corrected).

Despite her having filed the amendment no less than SIX TIMES, the CRA currently claims to have never heard back from her about the matter and has seized the money from her bank account.

[MrBogosity]

"Because we can, that's why."

[Travis Retriever]

"Because we can, that's why."

When is that ever NOT the reason?

[evensgrey]

Come on, it's been a week.  Nobody has heard of anything worthy of a nomination?