Woman whose bank account was frozen gets $5k refund

Watch the video above: Global News helps a Toronto woman solve her tax dilemma. Sean O’Shea reports. 

TORONTO – A woman who feared she would be homeless after the Canadian Revenue Agency seized her assets in November is elated after her money was returned.

Global News first reported Marion Hill’s story in December, mere days after the CRA froze her bank account and seized her assets because she owed back taxes.

“I had to pay my rent, I had to pay my hydro. I’m a diabetic,” she said in an interview Tuesday. “They took everything, I had nothing. I couldn’t buy insulin or other medications I’m on. I was terrified that I was going to be homeless, terrified that myself and my son would be homeless.”

Her sole source of income, $20,000, had been from the sale of a house and cashing in her RSPs. The money was placed in her TD Bank account. She tried to work out a payment schedule with the agency’s collectors, but according to her, they wouldn’t take monthly payments.

Hill didn’t know her account had been frozen until she was trying to buy glasses at a local LensCrafters.

“I know I have money in the bank and it says declined. And I said to them, I said, ‘there’s got to be a mistake.’ Declined again, so I phone the bank from the LensCrafters and the person on the other end of the line at the bank told me that my account was frozen, by court order from Revenue Canada,” she said.

After Global News reported Hill’s story, a meeting was set up between Hill, Toronto’s CRA director Deborah Danis and reporter Sean O’Shea.

Watch the original report by Sean O’Shea from Dec. 10, 2013. 

The CRA asked a number of questions trying to figure out how Hill got into the situation she was in.

“I broke down; I cried and sobbed, I felt like a beggar. I was so humiliated,” she said. “I didn’t know how to handle a situation like that, I’ve never been in a situation like that. It was quite devastating.”

Following the meeting she was given back $5,000 and offered resources to receive social assistance.

“I definitely want to thank you and Global News because I know in my heart if not for you and Global News, I would have just been another number that was shuffled with the rest of the papers,” she said.

The CRA has not responded to a request for comment on this story at the time of publishing.

– With files from Sean O’Shea