A CRA “joint director” of the “Special Enforcement Program” and the “Criminal Investigations Program” heard that an anonymous informant had alleged that a taxpayer was evading taxes with the assistance of a highly-placed CRA official. The director ordered a civil…
Tax “protesting” as crime
The CRA reports that a tax “protester” has been fined for evading tax and sentenced to prison for counselling others to commit fraud (presumably by teaching them tax protester “methods”).
Guilty pleas and the Tax Court
James Rhodes, in a recent post on the Canadian Tax Professionals group on LinkedIn, drew our attention to McIntrye v R, 2014 TCC 111, in which Justice Diane Campbell, among other things, found that the CRA was not bound by an agreed statement of facts (ASF) arrived at as part of a plea bargain and that the CRA, in assessing the taxpayers, was not required to make assumptions that were consistent with the ASF.
The Search for Revenue
The trend continues. The CBC made a big deal (and rightly so) out of a disclosure of a huge amount of data on offshore bank accounts made to the director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. It appears that German tax authorities have purchased a CD containing information on deposits made to Swiss bank accounts. The authorities purchased the data for €4 million but they expect to recover €500 million in taxes using the data. That’s a pretty good return on their investment (even taking into account the collections costs).
Over there
Offshore is in the news again. I wonder whether these studies confuse offshore accounts with tax evasion, at least to some degree. Canadian law doesn’t prevent one from keeping money in a tax haven bank account provided the existence of…
Natural person ‘arguments’
Yet another ‘tax protester’ has been convicted of evasion in R v Porisky & Gould, 2012 BCSC 67. The judge described the natural person ‘argument’ as “a failed attempt at word magic validity” and “legal numerology”. That’s exactly right.
Voluntary Disclosures
I’ve just published a permanent page to my blog on voluntary disclosures.
White collar revisited
A few months ago, I wrote a post complaining about how the CRA tends to go after the taxpayers who get the caught in the middle of tax schemes rather than the schemers themselves. Karen Cooper has written an interesting…
Proceeds of Crime
The following article appeared in a recent edition of the Hamilton Law Association Law Journal.
The police execute a search at your client’s house. They find pot plants and a large amount of cash. They seize the cash and charge your client with trafficking, and he is later convicted of that crime.
Criminal Minds
Mr. Mortensen was convicted of tax evasion in respect of some commissions he earned but failed to report. He filed an appeal with the Tax Court, and the Crown responded by bringing a motion to dismiss the appeal. The taxpayer, the Crown argued, shouldn’t be permitted to contest the tax owing and the gross negligence penalties imposed in respect of amounts for which he had been convicted of evasion.