Coinsquare Exchange Ordered To Hand Customer Records To Tax Agency

The Coinsquare exchange was ordered by the Canadian Tax agency to hand in about 10% of customer records for a check-up as we read more in our crypto news.

Canada’s Tax authority the Revenue Agency prevailed in a court battle for accessing high-value customer data that is held by the Coinsquare exchange and the CRA is coming for more. Under the federal judge’s March order, the exchange has to hand over detailed information on the Canadian customers and their trading activity while identifying info the Canada Revenue Agency. Coinsquare noted that it will disclose information on 5 to 10% of the 400,000 customers to the CRA which sought to secure in the first place. The documents indicated that only high-value accounts will be caught in the sweep and in the first of its kind ruling, the CRA won seven months after it started pursuing Coinshqare’s customer data in court.

CRA argued that it needed the data to check if the taxpayers were meeting the crypto reporting burdens and the federal court gave its approval. Also, the tax authority is now in the process of serving the exchange with another request for customer information by means of an Unnamed person requirement. The agency needs more information to verify compliance with the Canada Income Tax Act and the Excise Tax Act as well.

The crypto exchange will have 15 days to comply with the order. About five years ago, the Internal Revenue Agency in the US, launched a similar thing towards Coinbase but the exchange initially fought back on the IRS witchhunt but in the end, ended up handing records on more than 13K customers. Coinbase called the outcome a “partial victory” because it lowered down the scope of demands to accounts that only trade more than $20K.

Coinsquare echoed the sentiment as well but the final bargain with the Canadian tax agency will compel the exchange to hand over data on accounts that held $20K CAD from 2014 to 2020 as well as the largest accounts from each year:

 “Coinsquare negotiated to protect its clients’ privacy, and limit any disclosure to only what was absolutely required by the CRA under Canadian tax law. Instead of providing the CRA with all client data dating back to 2013 as was initially requested, Coinsquare and the CRA have agreed that information relating to 90-95% of Coinsquare’s clients will not be disclosed.”