The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has resumed efforts to recover taxpayers' debt. One of the tools the CRA uses to recover debt is called offsetting. Offsetting proactively applies tax refunds and benefit payments (such as the GST/HST credit) to tax debts and other government debts. To learn more about how government payments can be applied to specific debts, go to canada.ca/balance-owing.

Debt recovery is ongoing and will impact upcoming benefit and credit payments, including:

• the goods and services tax / harmonized sales tax credit (GST/HST credit) issued on April 5

• the Ontario trillium benefit issued on April 6.

The Canada Revenue Agency would like to remind you that it resumed its activities aimed at offsetting taxpayers' debt last October. Offsetting involves proactively applying tax refunds and benefit payments (such as the GST/HST credit) to tax and other government debts.

The quick and decisive actions taken by the Government of Canada to provide income support through the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) helped more than 8 million workers and their families stay afloat, and millions more through the Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) that followed.

As part of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government of Canada selected an attestation-based approach to provide this urgently-needed income support to Canadians in a timely fashion. Individuals determined if they were eligible for benefits based on established, publicly available criteria. The Government has been clear throughout the pandemic that while there will not be any penalties for those who applied for these benefits in good faith, individuals will have to repay the emergency benefits for which they were not entitled.