Where is this referral commission from? If you only worked at MacDonalds part-time and in no other industry this certainly stands out since this is a large portion of the income you are claiming and certainly may trigger CRA to ask for proof of where the income is coming from. The fact that you seem to be at around 5k is another red flag. Assume you are slightly over. I assume have all the various documents proving how you made this income and documentation for income reporting.
I got referral commission from an immigration consultant for referring clients. I have invoices with me and my net income stands near 6k.
3.5k for immigration referrals, how many people have you referred? Have the immigration consultant been declaring these referral payments on their taxes? Not sure if you can count payments without any tax/deduction since most aren’t. How much above 5k? The McDonald’s income is fine.
Can someone just apply for it even though they don't qualify and expect to pay it back afterwards? Would there be any long term consequences for that?
They haven’t announced whether there will be consequences. Hopefully there will be. If you don’t return the money right away I assume there also may interest. It is still benefit fraud if you know you don’t qualify and you apply. CRA is not what you really want to mess with.
Right but plausible deniability. Would it affect PR applications given its such a one-off situation?
It doesn't matter for OP's situation whether the consultant claimed the referral expense or not. I'm not sure what you mean about payments without tax/deductions not counting; it's still income, so it certainly counts.
They will have to pay it back, plus interest, so it will end up costing them money in the end. Given the threshold needed to prove fraud in claiming the benefit, it can be expected that there will not be any action taken against those who claimed the benefit without qualifying.
Sure there will be some sort of organized benefit fraud and those may be the ones prosecuted. Interest payments if you received the benefits incorrectly should be a good enough reason for most not to take the money. So much wrong with both CERB and the immigration system if immigration consultants are giving out 3.5k in finders fees which is essentially going to lead to someone qualifying for 8k.
