8 March 2018 CBA Commodity Tax Roundtable, Q.13

A non-resident client pays by wire transfer and sends a fax to the Revenue Processing Section to confirm payment - but still receives an assessment for non-payment. Comments? CRA stated:

Wire transfers are sent through the banking system based on the originating bank. Intermediary banks often have a limit on the number of characters allowed in the transaction, so this can result in some essential information being cut off.

Currently, the best way to ensure that a wire transfer is successful is to also send a fax with the account information. The fax should be sent to the attention of the CRA’s Revenue Processing Section at fax number 204-983-0924.

With the launch of the new ISO 20022 standard (expected in 2019), the information on a wire transfer will be fixed information and we will be able to ensure the “fixed field” is at the front of the data stream instead of the end. Additionally, there will be additional characters allowed. We expect this will resolve the current payment allocation challenges for these wire transfers.

CRA observed that because “intermediary banks often have a limit on the number of characters allowed in [a wire transfer] transaction, so this can result in some essential information being cut off” thereby resulting in difficulties allocating payments from non-residents and others to the correct account – and stated that “Currently, the best way to ensure that a wire transfer is successful is to also send a fax with the account information.”