Shopify CEO calls CRA request for Canadian stores’ records ‘overreach’

Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke said he plans to fight after six years' worth of records for Canadian Shopify stores were requested by the CRA.

The CEO of Shopify is vowing to fight a request from the Canada Revenue Agency asking the e-commerce company to provide it with six years’ worth of merchant records.

“I don’t particularly want a fight with the CRA (Canada’s tax authority)- but we got asked to backchannel them six years of records for all Canadian Shopify stores,” Tobi Lutke wrote on Twitter late Friday.

“This feels like low-key overreach to me. We will fight this.”

In an email response Monday about the reported request for merchant records, the CRA told Global News it uses the information obtained through Unnamed Persons Requirements (UPRs) to “identify taxpayers that may have been non-compliant,” and then verifies income has been reported appropriately and have satisfied “their filing obligations under the Acts administered by the CRA.”

“We collect information where it is lawful and directly related to compliance activities,” wrote Sylvie Branch, a spokesperson for the CRA. “The CRA must obtain judicial authorization before issuing a requirement to a third-party to get information about one or more unnamed persons.”

Branch wrote that due to confidentiality provisions “of the Acts we administer,” the CRA cannot comment or disclose taxpayer information. It also did not specify Ottawa-based Shopify’s name in its response.

This would not be the first time the CRA has requested an e-commerce company to provide information to the agency. In 2017, the CRA gave PayPal 45 days to turn over information about its account holders and the amount and number of payments they paid or received between January 2014 and November 2017.