February 9, 2010 by Dan White.

 If you are in trouble with CRA, and have not obtained a skilled Tax Representative, you could have a serious problem. Here is important information to keep in mind if the TaxMan comes to your door.

Dan White

For more info go to http://taxauditsolutions.ca

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From the Great White North news

Tax Debt And Distraint

Distraint is the process of seizing a person’s possessions to sell at auction, in order to clear outstanding tax debt. The taxman has the legal right to take this action without a court order, but a certain procedure needs to be followed to stay within the law.
Warning Letter

Firstly, a letter will be sent to the debtor warning that distraint action is about to begin. This will be followed by a visit to the debtor’s home or premises by a tax collector, in order to assess what assets and possessions of value may be taken. This visit must take place between sunrise and sunset on any day except Sundays and public holidays, and while no appointment needs to be made or time of visit announced in advance, the collector can only make a ‘peaceful entry’ to your home. In other words, if you refuse entry, the collector will need to apply for a court order before going any further.
Seizure of Possessions

During the visit, a list of seizable items and their value will be made. Most of your personal possessions are able to be taken, but there are several exemptions. Firstly, any item essential for your work or trade cannot be taken if this would impair you ability to carry on working. Clothes are exempt, as are perishable foods and the basics of living - a chair and table, along with basic cooking equipment, and a bed are the often cited examples of such basics.

Finally, any item which is jointly owned or wholly owned by someone else is ineligable for seizure.
Last Chance Before Seizure

Once this list has been drawn up, you will normally be given a period of 5 days in which to either clear your debt or reach a repayment agreement. If this is not done, then the taxman has the right to seize the goods and sell them at auction, often for a fraction of their true value, meaning that even after distraint your debt might not be fully cleared.
What To Do If You Receive A Distraint Notice

If you receive a letter warning of distraint, it’s vital to get in touch with your tax office as soon as possible. In many cases, the whole process can be avoided by reaching an agreement to repay over a mutually acceptable period. In fact, only about one in a thousand distraint warnings actually result in the sale of goods.

If you find the whole issue seriously worrying, then consult with a tax debt specialist or charity such as Citizens’ Advice, who will have had plenty of experience in the area of tax debt and will be able to ensure that even if distraint can’t be avoided, at least it will be carried out in a fair and reasonable manner.

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August 21, 2009 by Dan White.

 Hi Folks,

It is interesting to note that the USA was able to penetrate international banking privacy under the guise of catching terrorists, and now privacy  penetration is so common place that Canada is able to do it with no good excuse.

The days of privacy ended with the first good excuse which was 9/11. That was the day I stopped recommending offshore as a way to have complete privacy. Offshore still offers privacy to some extent but not when it comes to the tax man.

The tax man would be a lot better off getting Canadians on side by implementing fair taxation. Right now there is a ton of pissed off Canadians who have been financially ruined by overly punative practices.

Dan White

++++++

Canadian tax evaders warned

Aug 21, 2009 04:30 AM
Richard J. Brennan
OTTAWA BUREAU

OTTAWA–Revenue Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn says Ottawa is trying to get access to Canadians’ bank account information in so-called tax havens like Switzerland.

He told the Toronto Star yesterday that efforts are being made to change rules and regulations so Ottawa can go after Canadians with money stashed in secret bank accounts to avoid paying taxes.

“Also we need … agreements with other countries to exchange information,” he said, adding that Ottawa is already in discussion with about 10 countries. “We want to obtain all the legislative authority to be able to pursue those people who (engage in) tax avoidance.”

Blackburn was reacting to the fact the U.S. Department of Justice has cracked the tradition of strict banking secrecy with an agreement forcing UBS AG, the Zurich-based financial giant, to hand over the names behind 4,450 accounts as part of a historic lawsuit settlement.

Blackburn said his department has proposed changes to the finance department to streamline efforts to go after offshore accounts if tax avoidance is suspected and to find out when money is transferred out of the country.

Blackburn said now when Canadian officials try to get banking data from other countries it takes up to six years for a private individual and seven years for a business.

The minister also asked U.S. justice officials to notify Ottawa if any data they get from UBS has pertinent information on Canadians.

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February 13, 2009 by Dan White.

 At a time when I have been busy losing faith that Canada is a kinder gentler country, there is a glimmer of hope that somehow our government agencies, that have become ever increasingly more punitive, will be reigned in.

Government agencies have been ignoring the Charter of Rights and invading privacy, behaving in high handed and arbitrary fashions.

The agencies are not consistent on how they treat one person over another. There is a lack of fairness.

The agencies do not care who’s life they ruin or what business goes down because of them. Bankruptcies are up 50% and you can be sure there is a government agency has played some role in making the situation worse.

There is a growing groundswell of citizens who have had enough. This recent court case in favor of the citizen will set the future in motion. You can look to see more cases and more losses by government agencies.

CRA and their tax regime pales in comparison to the Ontario Securities Commission who will post the details of allegations against a citizen. They know no boundaries of decency, not even stopping at the publishing of a citizen’s mental health on their web site. Further they will torment said ill person with consistent badgering …overruling Doctor’s letters, making demands and then publishing the information for the entire country to read. The OSC conducts a trial by media and tribunal of personal information with no concern of a citizens right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. They ruin businesses and lives in the pursuit of evidence. And if you want to understand the reason just add up all the fines posted on the OSC site.

The Minister Of Labor is a feared agency for businesses… they can come in and make orders and levy huge fines and have the power of incarseration. Usually it is just huge fines. Again there is trial by being guilty until proven innocent.

The OSC and MOL both can conduct trials (Called a Tribunal)  to discover evidence. They follow rules of court, but when you are sitting there being cross examined by their lawyers, you get the picture… you are in a judicial system with no protection by the Charter of Rights.

While CRA can not audit while they are investigating, and when it becomes an investigation, they lose a lot of their broad powers. Still their mandate is about getting as much money as they can. In the GTA alone there are 2,400 auditors out looking for the almighty dollar.

WSIB comes in looking for increased premiums, missed anythings… Team leaders pump up their auditors to get as much as you can… make targets etc…. If you agree to their dollar assessments, then they will back date your debts. Fighting them is expensive, so most businesses fold. In order to fight them, you need to pay the premiums first and then they will listen to your objections.

Now CRA and WSIB have teamed up and share good leads. It makes them both more profitable, one Agency goes in and finds lots of money and then they tip off the other Agency. So now it is a double whammy.

And that is what the Government Agencies have become….Teams of Auditors and investigators, out to get as much money as they can. Success is measured in dollars and cents. They levy huge penalties on people in hard times who can not pay their ticket….. When a citizen can’t pay the principal debt, let alone the tripling of the final amount, very often the result is a bankrupt citizen.

Canada has become a place where its citizens fear their government even when they have done nothing wrong. You never know who’s life will be ruined by the government.

It is all about money and now that we are in tough economic times, the agencies are even more agressive in their financial assults on the Canadian Citizen.

A kinder gentler Canada? I think not!

The following case gives a glimmer of hope that Agencies will have to reign in their Dark Forces and respect the law, the Charter and the Constitution.  And God forbid… have a sense of fairness.

Dan White.

The following article is printed on line on the Times Colonist and written by L Dicson.

*****

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/agents+rebuked+million+awarded+target+raid/1279538/story.html

Hal Neumann, with wife Maureen Rivers, has been awarded $1.3 million in a lawsuit against the Canada Revenue Agency.

Hal Neumann, with wife Maureen Rivers, has been awarded $1.3 million in a lawsuit against the Canada Revenue Agency.
Photograph by: Darren Stone, Victoria Times Colonist

A B.C. Supreme Court jury has awarded a Saanich businessman $1.3 million in damages after finding the Canada Revenue Agency breached his right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The jury also recommended the minister of revenue apologize to Hal Neumann for the Sept. 7, 2005, search of his home by five CRA agents and two armed and uniformed police officers for documents he had already given the government.

“This jury has told government agencies, ‘Be careful,’ ” said Neumann’s lawyer, Steven Kelliher.

Neumann called the verdict a victory for “ordinary folks in Canada who have been pushed around for far too long.”

“Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined this,” he said.

Richard Neary, who was part of the legal team, called the decision earth-shattering. “It’s a landmark in law in terms of the recognition of the vital importance that the charter plays and the respect with which it needs to be upheld.”

The jury found Neumann’s right to privacy, which CRA employees infringed, was worth $1 million. The jury also found the CRA employees were negligent and damaged Neumann. They awarded him $150,000 for pain, injury, suffering and loss of enjoyment of life, $100,000 for aggravated damages and $50,000 for loss of income.

The CRA is reviewing the decision and considering its next steps, media relations spokesman Noel Carisse said from Ottawa.

Neumann, who was born in East Germany and escaped with his family to refugee camps in West Berlin, launched the civil suit because he felt bullied and terrorized in the search. He has suffered from depression, paranoia and post-traumatic stress disorder ever since the search, court was told.

Last week, the jury heard Neumann was never the subject of a CRA investigation, but an innocent third party. In 2004, his business went through a successful audit. During the audit, however, the CRA learned that Leah Bonnar, an Alberta woman Neumann did business with, had received commission cheques from him. She later became the focus of a CRA tax-evasion investigation. Neumann gave the auditor his original documents concerning Bonnar. Those documents, which were photocopied and returned to him, were the same ones later sought in the search warrant.

Neumann was at home on the morning of Sept. 7, 2005, when he saw police cars driving into his small cul-de-sac. When he answered the door, a CRA investigator told him she had a warrant to search his home for records regarding the Bonnar investigation.

When Neumann asked her why the CRA was accompanied by police, the police officer said in most such searches, everyone in the house is arrested.

Neumann complied with orders to pull out all the cash he had in the house, and took a computer expert upstairs to his office to download anything he wanted. The search lasted several hours.

University of Victoria law professor Rebecca Johnson said there have been few awards in Canadian history for damages stemming from breaches of charter rights. In 1998, an unidentified woman was awarded $220,000 after suing Toronto police for violating her constitutional right to equality and for breaching the duties they owed her. She had argued that police should have told her she was a potential victim of the man known as the balcony rapist because of where she lived.

The Neumann case is groundbreaking, said Johnson, in that the jury’s decision reflects the fact that it was an unreasonable and unnecessary search.

“This is a very big fine against a powerful agency. It means the CRA will have to take very seriously the human dignity of the people whom they investigate,” said Johnson.

“This would be completely upsetting for any ordinary citizen to have five agents and two police officers show up at your house and tell you they can arrest you. It would be absolutely traumatizing and it would shake your faith in our system of justice.”

ldickson@tc.canwest.com

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November 4, 2008 by Dan White.

There are 2,400 tax auditors in the GTA. The tax collectors want your money.  So be prepared the tax man commeth and the tax man taketh… unless you are tax audit proof.

What that means as a small business is; if you do not want a CRA Audit to upset your life, cause you stress and for you to lose thousands of dollars of legitimate deductions because you did not do rock solid tax bookkeeping, then you need an audit proof solution to protect your after tax dollars.

The standard bookkeeping systems make true the words “Two things in life are sure; one is death and the other is taxes.”  This statement is true if you use conventional approaches to record keeping. Quickbooks is not audit ready accounting. If you have to get ready for an audit then you are doing your bookkeeping wrong.

Today’s punitive tax regime that specifically targets small business is raising tax havoc with our small businesses who are struggling just to eke out a small after tax profit. Taxes can kill you just as surely as stress can cause you death. CRA and Stress are spelled the same. A-U-D-I-T.

If you want to live a CRA Tax Free, Stressless life…. Learn to keep a perfect set of books. Our mission is to get the BKS (Bookkeeping Simplified) out there in the market so that small businesses pay only their fair share of taxes. No more tax and no less tax than they are legally obligated to on their non deductible personal expenses.

The tax department gets away with tax payer abuse, simply because the general population keeps mum that they were abused because of social embarrassment. In reality 2,400 auditors who each do over a hundred audits a year, year after year, creating an amazing secret…. Show me an entrepreneur, and I will show you someone who has had a brush in with CRA or who is paying too much tax.

This secret tax shame either needs exposure, or it needs to be eliminated by learning how to keep tax audit proof books.

Be prepared, this down turn in the economy is going to generate a more aggressive tax man, who will want to replace lost income from less businesses with more dollars from fewer businesses.

It is your choice for what solutions to choose, but you need to make one or the other, failing which death and taxes are spelled the same as taxman.

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June 9, 2008 by Dan White.

This is how I see the Analogy of the Animial Tax Kingdom

INSERT: When I am knocking accountants, I am really knocking the timid ones and and they accounting profession for being fear mongers. There are good accountants out there, and naturally no one complains about them, so I just get do deal with the results of the bad ones.

There are good accountants and bad accountants. The challenge is how to find the good ones. I suggest that if they resonate fear and they don’t have you in a fearless audit readyness, then you are not being serviced properly. If you live in taxman fear, why do you need your accountant? You can live in fear without their help. Or you can take charge and do something about it.

Now at the moment, I am particularly annoyed by the Certified General Accountants ads about how they have trademarked the name “Creative Accounting” so that only they can use it. They use the guise that if it is not a CGA giving the advice then it is a wink wink nudge nudge piece of advice. What kind of crap is that? I’ll tell you what kind of crap it is; it is them being afraid that they are losing business to consultants and non licenced accountants who do not live in fear of the tax man. Having an accountant’s license does not mean you are going to get good advice. How dare they suggest that if you don’t go to a CGA you will get bad advice. So if any accountant dares to challenge my assertions that THEY ARE SAYING THAT CONSULTANTS AND NON LICENSED ACCOUNTANTS ONLY GIVE SHADY ADVICE! So if they can knock, they can therefore also can be knocked. Knock! Knock! Who’s there? Tim!, Tim Who? Tim Id.

Let me see here; an accountant graduates from their courses, walks out the door into the business world, the water dripping water off from behind their ears, and they are going to give you sound advice? They usually don’t know anything about the real world when they first graduate. They need to get out there and grow a few grey hairs before they start suggesting they are the answer to today’s business.

Most accountants do not prepare books in an audit ready format. Most accountants spread the fear of the tax man. Frankly they do business from the corner of fear of which they have a reason to be afraid. The taxman can make their life hell and even ruin their business.

CRA has forced the accountants across the land to become defacto tax generators for CRA. Going into a licensed accounting firm for help with a Tax Issue is akin to a chicken looking for scraps in a fox hole.

Dan’s Nature’s view and analogy of the Natural Kingdom of Taxes. (NKOT).

Foxes den up in former skunk dens, because it stinks in there and keeps out the other predators.

CRA is the skunk. Most animals can’t stand the smell, so avoid them. Except for foxes who know the smell of skunks keeps other predators away from their babies. The smell of a skunk is much worse than anything a skunk can do to you. If you know how to deal with a skunk they are a pussy cat.

Accountants are the foxes. Foxes need to eat, but they run from a fight. They just take the easy pickings.

The lawyers are the cougars; they are fierce fighters, good to have on your side. They don’t live in fear and know to play a low profile and are deadly when they attack. You need to be friends with them.

The consultants are the wolves; they are wary wise and wicked when crosses. They step back and watch the forest from the top of the hill. They are cunning and almost impossible to catch or kill. You can get wise counsel from a wolf. A wolf will only attack when it knows the odds are on its side.

The population is comprised of rabbits, chickens, Guinea hens, racoons, and wolverines.

Depending on what animal the citizen is will determine the relationship to the skunks, wolves and wolverines and how it survives.

The rabbit; Always food for all the animals… always running away from everything. Not much time for procreation, so it has to be quick. It lives to not lose. Rabbits always end up being eaten by someone and is often eaten alive.

The Chicken; The chicken is a dumb animal that is easy prey. It lives to not lose, it lives to eat and procreate. Chickens get eaten by everyone and blames others for their misfortunes. Living to not lose always ends up as a loss…. sooner or later.

The Guinea Hen; It lives to have fun; it is wiry, screams bloody murder when any predator comes near… Predators tend to leave guinea hens alone as predators don’t like the screaming spotlight on them. Guinea hens live to win. They eat, laugh, take all kinds of time to play and procreate. The only time they are not in a hurry is when they are not doing anything, which is often.

The racoon; they are wiry, resilient, huge population that is not that no one notices exists, they live to live and most predators, consider them not good to attack or eat.

The Wolf; the lone wolf is the survivor of the wilderness, it is tough and wise, it stands along it fights wisely for survival. It knows to pack up in hard times or for taking on bigger prey.

The wolverines; The remote few who dare to tango with the temper of the tenacious wolverine, live to regret the day they dared, if they survive to live at all.

Even the grizzly bear will back off from a wolverine. The Wolverine is the quiet king of the forest. They are rarely seen and no one hunts them. What a wolverine wants, a wolverine gets. When the Wolverine fights, losing is not an option.

The wolverine does not try to destroy the enemy, unless it is hungry. It just teaches its foes a lesson that will never be forgotten.

The wolverine is in the skunk family, it is the King of the Skunks. It sprays its food with monstrous mighty musk that carries a stern warning; “Don’t muck around with menacing musked mangler.” The only thing worse than the smell of a wolverine, is the results of tangling with one.

LONG LIVE THE WOLVERINEs, The Guinea Hens, Racoons and LONG LIVE THE WOLVES!

In order to survive CRA and live a peaceful life, we need to be a successful survivor, we all need to learn to stand up for our rights.

You need to choose your animals wisely. Be the one that serves you best and align yourself with those who play to win.

So says I.

Best Regards

Dan The Silver Wolf

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