Monday, January 14, 2008

Does He Owe GST?

Diane Francis details what we need to know to sort out whether Mulroney owes GST and income tax penalties on the cash he got from Schreiber:

1. Mulroney took $225,000 in cash, taxable fees, but did not pay GST nor Quebec PST because he said he worked for a foreign entity. You cannot just "say" you worked for someone offshore to avoid charging sales taxes so Mr. Mulroney must produce an invoice or proof from his offshore client, in this case allegedly Thyssen, that he was paid $225,000 for services rendered.

If he cannot prove that Thyssen was his client he owes nearly 14% GST (because Schreiber lived in Quebec at the time) plus penalties and interest for earning fees from a Quebecer. If he cannot prove that Thyssen was his client then he was paid off for some other purpose, or for some unknown entity inside or outside Canada, by Schreiber.

2. Mr. Mulroney admitted he did not declare the $225,000 as income for tax purposes either for six years. What penalties and interest did Revenue Canada charge him? We would like to see the notice of assessment. Or did he get special treatment?

3. Mr. Mulroney said he did not have to declare the $225,000 as income because the fees all went toward expenses. Let's see all the receipts to back up this statement? And if this was true why would he declare income that was not income? Let's see the letters written to Revenue Canada to explain all this.

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1 comment:

The Mound of Sound said...

of course he's liable to these taxes given that he was resident in Canada at the time the "contract" was negotiated with Schreiber who was also resident in Canada at the time. Of course that's assuming there was any contract to negotiate on behalf of Thyssen in the first place. I'd love to hear Mulroney explain the prep work he did to familiarize himself with Thyssen's operation and its armoured vehicles as well as the target nation's circumstances before he launched into his global promotion activities. Surely if he did this for Thyssen his services must've been in demand by similar companies during this period - unless - unless of course he was really working for Schreiber (assuming he was working at all).