Log In
Register
Home
Topic RSS
Facebook
Twitter
Email this7:16 am
February 20, 2018
Offline
Is the Social Insurance Number or SIN the way CRA/tax dept. is able to identify someone's interest income obtained from a bank or cu? Without it/SIN the person's bank or cu cannot does not submit a T5 on his or her behalf to CRA?
What does this mean "identifies you for tax purposes" - "Your SIN is the number that identifies you for income tax purposes under section 237 of the Income Tax Act"
1:11 pm
October 21, 2013
Offline
Banks ARE required to get your SIN if you have a bank account and report income over $50 to CRA., just as your employer must,
But not for credit cards because there is no reportable income from a credit card..
1:26 pm
February 20, 2018
Offline
No Loon banks are not required to have ur sin. they open accts for internationals without sin. For locals no sin required maybe just for rrsp tfsa
1:33 pm
December 12, 2009
Offline
Banks can refuse to open a savings account for you if you refuse to provide your SIN, though most usually won't. At HSBC, where a customer did not have a SIN, such as a new immigrant (temporary SINs or TINs are possible, though, and begin with the numeral '9'), we input '999999999'. Where they declined, we selected the appropriate drop-down selection and used '999999998'.
If you decline the bank to use your SIN, and they don't refuse to open an account for you (they have to give you a letter of that and why they're refusing to open the account, under federal Access to Basic Banking Regulations, if they're federally-regulated), then the Canada Revenue Agency can impose a $50-100 administrative monetary penalty on you (whether directly or indirectly to the institution, who passed it on to you, as described at https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/publications/t4015/t5-guide-return-investment-income-2016.html#P50_5004), under provisions of the Income Tax Act, for each year and for each issuer with whom you refused to disclose your SIN to for tax reporting purposes.
At least in the context of federally-regulated financial institutions (privacy laws of provincially-regulated credit unions vary by province), you can give your FI your SIN but limit their use to disclosing to the CRA (i.e., not to credit bureaus). Ask a branch or contact centre representative of your FI for a 'privacy choices', 'privacy options', or 'privacy consent' form. In short, if you want to limit your SIN's disclosure, this latter route is the best route to take. Otherwise, you may well find yourself without the desired account you wanted or, if you're lucky, you might get the account and have to pay an additional $100 each year to the CRA. 
To hotmony's latter question, yes the CRA can track you via other means without your SIN; however, without your SIN, your electronically-filed tax slips may not appear in your CRA My Account function. For example, Langara College has, up to and including last year, filed tuition receipts with the CRA via paper method and without SINs, so they haven't shown up in my CRA account. This year, CRA is mandating electronic filing of tuition receipts, so they're trying to get everyone's SIN (I haven't provided mine yet, which isn't a huge deal). Not providing a SIN to an employer or to an FI is more serious in that administrative monetary penalties can be levied as described above.
Hope that helps,
Doug
4:01 pm
March 17, 2018
Offline
I'm reluctant to provide my SIN number if I don't have to, as recently both Desjardins and Capital One credit card division have exposed millions of people's SIN numbers. I don't understand how in the USA Equifax and Transunion and Experian are able to freeze your credit upon request, but here, the 2 same companies, Equifax and Transunion will only do fraud alerts, which is intended to impact the application for a new account while it is taking place. The way a fraud alert works is ( I'm copying this info ) :
any fraud alert on the credit report is sent to the lending organization, along with the other information on the credit report. Upon receipt of the credit report, and subject to applicable law, it is incumbent upon the lending organization to take any additional steps needed to verify the identity of the applicant. More specifically, unless required by law, the lending organization decides what steps to take, if any, upon receiving the fraud alert.
6:22 pm
February 20, 2018
Offline
A cu claimed they can be fined for not getting member sins
3:42 am
October 21, 2013
Offline
dealjunkie said
A cu claimed they can be fined for not getting member sins
That's likely true, as per Doug's post #4. Probably something similar for CUs.
7:34 am
February 20, 2018
Offline
Doug said
Banks can
At least in the context of federally-regulated financial institutions (privacy laws of provincially-regulated credit unions vary by province), you can give your FI your SIN but limit their use to disclosing to the CRA (i.e., not to credit bureaus). Ask a branch or contact centre representative of your FI for a 'privacy choices', 'privacy options', or 'privacy consent' form. In short, if you want to limit your SIN's disclosure, this latter route is the best route to take. Otherwise, you may well find yourself without the desired account you wanted or, if you're lucky, you might get the account and have to pay an additional $100 each year to the CRA.
Doug
Whats the difference not disclosing sin or using banks privacy options not to disclose sin either way cra can fine depositor right?
8:32 am
April 6, 2013
Offline
dealjunkie said
Whats the difference not disclosing sin or using banks privacy options not to disclose sin either way cra can fine depositor right?
Yes, but it is more work for CRA to accurately do so.
Someone at CRA may need to contact the bank to get your date of birth if the name and address on the T5 slip doesn't exactly match those on your tax account or there is more than one person at the address with the same name.
8:33 am
December 12, 2009
Offline
dealjunkie said
Whats the difference not disclosing sin or using banks privacy options not to disclose sin either way cra can fine depositor right?
The Privacy Options or Privacy Choices form will usually let you choose whether the bank can disclose your SIN within its subsidiary and affiliate entities, with credit bureaus, and, occasionally, with the CRA. In most cases, where you provide the SIN, they don't let you opt out of sharing it with the CRA and law enforcement agencies. If you really want to decline to give them your SIN, then they can either pass on a $100 fine that the CRA would either levy on them or that the CRA would levy directly upon you.
If you provide your SIN and opt out of sharing with credit bureaus, then they won't share it. Your SIN may already be on your credit bureau. You'd have to request a copy of your credit report from the credit bureau(s) in Canada and then request they remove it.
See my post # 4 for further details as Loonie mentioned at post # 7.
Thanks,
Doug
8:42 am
April 6, 2013
Offline
dealjunkie said
A cu claimed they can be fined for not getting member sins
Loonie said
That's likely true, as per Doug's post #4. Probably something similar for CUs.
That's true for anyone.
According to Penalties section of the T5 Guide - Return of Investment Income, both the T5 filer and the T5 slip recipient are liable:
Failure to provide information on a return
Anyone who prepares an information return has to make a reasonable effort to get the necessary information, including identification numbers, from the individuals, corporations, trusts, or partnerships that will receive the slips. If you do not do this, you may be liable to a $100 penalty for each failure to comply with this requirement.Failure to provide an identification number
Individuals, trusts (See note under Box 22 – Recipient identification number), corporations, or partnerships have to give their social insurance number (SIN), trust account number or business number (BN) on request to anyone who has to prepare an information slip for them. A person or partnership that does not do so is liable to a $100 penalty for each failure to comply with this requirement. This penalty does not apply if the person or partnership had applied for, but had not yet received, a SIN, a BN, or program account number at the time the return was filed.A person who does not have an identification number must apply for one within 15 days of the date of an information request. After receiving the identification number, the person has 15 days to provide it to the person who is preparing an information return.
Those requirements seem to mirror Income Tax Act subsections 162(5) and 162(6):
Failure to provide information on form
162 (5) Every person who fails to provide any information required on a prescribed form made under this Act or a regulation is liable to a penalty of $100 for each such failure, unless
(a) in the case of information required in respect of another person or partnership, a reasonable effort was made by the person to obtain the information from the other person or partnership; or
(b) in the case of a failure to provide a Social Insurance Number on a return of income, the person had applied for the assignment of the Number and had not received it at the time the return was filed.
…
Failure to provide identification number
162 (6) Every person or partnership who fails to provide on request their business number, their Social Insurance Number, their trust account number or their U.S. federal taxpayer identifying number to a person required under this Act or the Regulations to make an information return requiring the number is liable to a penalty of $100 for each such failure, unless
(a) an application for the assignment of the number is made within 15 days (or, in the case of a U.S. federal taxpayer identifying number, 90 days) after the request was received; and
(b) the number is provided to the person who requested the number within 15 days after the person or partnership received it.
10:07 pm
February 20, 2018
Offline
The FIs seems they bully for the sin
5:33 am
February 20, 2018
Offline
if sin is mandatory why does motive say its optional on their online application
7:27 am
December 12, 2009
Offline
dealjunkie said
if sin is mandatory why does motive say its optional on their online application
@dealjunkie, I've explained this already at post # 4. I never said it was required, but have pointed out possible financial and non-financial ramifications if you refuse to provide it, which can include refusal to open an account or monetary penalties levied by the CRA on an annual basis.
Separately, since you were the original poster, I've been meaning to ask you why you blanked out your original question/post except I noticed something odd, the edits were done by 'hotmony'. So, you've essentially changed your forum display name from 'hotmony' to 'dealjunkie'?
Thanks,
Doug
7:57 am
October 21, 2013
Offline
Thanks for pointing that out, doug.
I think we are making too much out of the optionality of SIN numbers in current circumstances.
It's rather like ticking off that you've read and agree to various T & C on websites. You can choose not to tick it off, of course, but you won't be able to continue with the site.
However, with the increasing risk of security breaches, legislators msy have to reconsider the rules around how SINs are used.
8:45 am
September 7, 2018
Offline
Loonie said
Thanks for pointing that out, doug.I think we are making too much out of the optionality of SIN numbers in current circumstances.
However, with the increasing risk of security breaches, legislators may have to reconsider the rules around how SINs are used.
1. Agree - some are making this a bigger deal than it is.
2. In regard to "legislators may have to reconsider the rules around SINs" - this has been going on for many years already - I had a PRI at one time (Personal Record Identifier) which was used for various financial and personnel issues/records because the SIN was considered too "confidential" for expanded use. Highly doubt the present govt is going to do anything.
1:36 pm
October 27, 2013
Offline
dealjunkie said
No Loon banks are not required to have ur sin. they open accts for internationals without sin. For locals no sin required maybe just for rrsp tfsa
This old post forgets the fact that ex-Canada account holders don't file Canadian tax returns. The FIs withhold the appropriate amount of investment income per any corresponding tax treaty and remit to CRA anyway. Same thing happens to ex-pats like myself when working out of country. For that, Canadian FIs don't need SINs.
2:31 pm
December 12, 2009
Offline
AltaRed said
This old post forgets the fact that ex-Canada account holders don't file Canadian tax returns. The FIs withhold the appropriate amount of investment income per any corresponding tax treaty and remit to CRA anyway. Same thing happens to ex-pats like myself when working out of country. For that, Canadian FIs don't need SINs.
True, AltaRed, but in severing your ties with Canada when abroad, you're supposed to close all your Canadian bank accounts, no?
Also, some banks are starting to prohibit non-residents from opening Canadian bank accounts, even if they're Canadian citizens. They usually want at least temporary residency status.
Cheers,
Doug
4:07 pm
October 27, 2013
Offline
Doug said
True, AltaRed, but in severing your ties with Canada when abroad, you're supposed to close all your Canadian bank accounts, no?
Also, some banks are starting to prohibit non-residents from opening Canadian bank accounts, even if they're Canadian citizens. They usually want at least temporary residency status.
Cheers,
Doug
No, there is no need to sever bank accounts in Canada when going abroad. I kept all my bank accounts and brokerage accounts, but was restricted from trading my brokerage accounts. Certain bills continued to be paid via auto-debit from my Canadian chequing account.
The FIs withheld the appropriate amount of withholding tax on investment income per Can-US tax treaty.
I don't know anything about non-Canadian residents opening new accounts. Clearly, money laundering legislation is the key here.
Please write your comments in the forum.