Learn About Our Communication Practices With Businesses
Scammers use a variety of increasingly sophisticated strategies to get confidential information about businesses and their staff, clients and suppliers. For example, they may contact you posing as our employee to get information allowing them to access our online services and to request refunds on behalf of the business.
Scammers may also contact you and change the phone number that's displayed. Even if the number of the incoming call seems to come from our organization, if the call seems odd or is made at an odd hour, contact us.
When to be wary of a communication
If a person contacts the business and pretends to be acting on behalf of Revenu Québec, be on guard if:
- They use an urgent, threatening or disturbing tone.
- They use a text to contact you.
- They ask you for personal or confidential information, such as a password or the number of your last notice of assessment.
- They request an immediate payment or reimbursement.
- They send you documents with links or with files to download.
- They leave you a voicemail containing confidential data.
If one of these practices was used to contact the business, contact us. For a fraud attempt, you should inform us fast so we can implement additional measures to protect confidential information.
How we communicate with businesses
To learn the difference between a communication that comes from our organization and a scam, see our communication practices below.
Phone calls
We always contact you during normal business hours. In each call, our employee must identify themself and state the reason for the call. Reasons we usually contact a business by phone include the following:
- You sent us a request online, such as a request to register for our files, and we need additional information to process your request.
- You sent us a form, such as a notice of objection, and we want to follow up.
- We mailed you correspondence but you didn't follow up.
If you receive a call that seems to come from our organization but you have doubts that it's legit, tell the person calling that you want to call them back and then contact us.
When the business registers for our online services, you'll get a confirmation email in My Account or at the email address associated with the file. We may later email you a verification code to authenticate yourself when you log on to our online services.
We can email businesses to inform them of things including:
- a notice of a communication available in My Account
- a change to a law
- a tax obligation to meet soon
- new tax measures for their sector of activity
- annual new features for tools
- an update of a guide or form
- We never send confidential information by non-secure email without your consent, such as the amount of a payment received or a payment due. You must connect to My Account to get that type of informtion.
- We never request information by email, unless prior agreement was reached between you and one of our staff by means other than email.
- We never email documents with links or with files to download without your prior consent.
- We never ask you to update the business's information by email.
End of note
Secure email
After discussion with you and one of our staff, we can send you documents and information through secure email. This service secures the communication sent to keep it confidential.
If you make such a written or phone request and then receive a reply about the request for secure email, you can continue the exchange by email in complete safety.
Letter
When a change or incident related to the business's file occurs, we always send a message to inform the business. For example, when registering for clicSÉQUR – Entreprises, we always send the business a letter to confirm its registration.
Phone or online survey
We regularly conduct phone and online surveys to get feedback from our clients or hire firms to conduct them. For these surveys:
- No information from our databanks is sent to the survey firm (if there is one).
- No one is authorized to ask you for tax information on our behalf.
- All legal provisions guaranteeing the protection of confidential information are met.
- Participation is voluntary and anonymous, and there are no consequences for declining.
Video (Teams)
Before exchanging information about the business's tax file on Teams, we must always confirm your identity. Once this is done, we may, under certain circumstances, ask you to share your screen.
- We never ask to take control of your computer.
- We never ask you to save confidential documents in the Teams conversation.
End of note
Mailing lists
For our mailing lists, our supplier Cyberimpact, a Canadian communications platform, will send you an email every time we publish the following:
- a press release
- tax news
- job offers
You can unsubscribe from these lists at any time.
If you're a self-employed person and you use My Account for individuals, our means of contacting you may be different. For more information, see Communications Policy.