Employer Said I Was Tax Exempt For The Last 7 Years Only To Call A Meeting With All Employees And Say We Owe All Taxes Dating Back To The Date Of Employment.

I have First Nations status and have been working for an Indigenous organization for 7 years the organization informed me when I started that I'd be being paid with a tax exempt salary. My employer told me today the tax exemption is non-compliant with the Canadian revenue agency. My employer filed a voluntary disclosure with CRA and will start deducting tax next week.

I will need to refile and pay all taxes that are now owed for last 7 years. I'm aware CRA can only go back 10 years and minimum 4 years if they're lenient. My employer has offered to pay 50% of "my" debt. I calculate I will owe somewhere between $32,000 - $50,000.

I need help to figure out how to appeal to CRA to lessen the amount owed. I'm also interested in any other options available to me such as legal actions against my employer to compensate me for this given that it was not my personal error.

Please help. What would you do? Where can I start with this? Obviously I need to contact a lawyer and already have sent emails to a few law firms but my heads spinning because of this.

Does anyone know anything about the laws when it comes to taxation in Canada?

Is what this organization did legal ?

Telling me for the last 7 years that my salary has been tax exempt, not taxing me and then dropping on my head that myself and all my coworkers owe the government between 25,000 and 100,000 Canadian individually because of their mistakes?