Funny thing is the Liberals have done more for the underground economy that any other Government. ie: you know how many people are now working 'under the table' so as to avoid claw backs from their Emergency Benefits programs...Both employer and employees. It's rampant out here in the sticks....Haha...
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So, the CEWS ends up providing further incentives to participants in the underground economy to increase rather than decrease or eliminate their tax evasion. Once the economy recovers from the COVID-19 shutdown they may, or may not, increase their reported sales back to previous levels. This Canadian tax lawyer suspects once they get used to the increased unreported cash, they will become addicted to it and will continue to leave the new, larger portion off the books.
While the problem of unreported cash sales and the underground economy is an ongoing focus of CRA, the CEWS will have the unintended consequence of supporting the underground economy. This probably cannot be avoided.
However, the incentive for massive tax fraud fuelled by lack of basic information gathering on the application forms and lack of appropriate penalties in the original rules is scandalous and unforgivable.