The BC Court of Appeal has dismissed the conviction appeal of Chilliwack’s notorious tax cheat who taught a nonsensical scheme encouraging hundreds of people to evade millions of dollars in taxes.
Russell Porisky’s appeal was rejected at a hearing in Vancouver on April 30.
Almost three years ago, Porisky was sentenced to four years in jail and he was handed fines of just under $260,000 for teaching the debunked “natural person” theory.
He was sentenced on July 29, 2016 in Vancouver Supreme Court alongside his partner Elaine Gould who was sentenced to one day in jail and fined $38,242.
When he was first convicted in 2012, the court heard he and Gould’s fraudulent counselling to more than 800 students resulted in an estimated $11 million in income tax evasion.
The “natural person” argument behind Porisky’s scheme has been rejected repeatedly by the courts. The idea taught is that income tax is optional as part of a contract with the government.
In YouTube videos still posted online, he claims that “income tax is nothing more than an internal federal excise tax which is only mandatory for those who choose to work as a legal representative, under an implied contract of service, for the benefit of a federally created legal (artificial) person known as a ‘taxpayer.’”
His problem, along with that of his acolytes, is that he is simply wrong.
One of those followers, a woman integral to Porisky’s school, Debbie Anderson, was sentenced to 4.5 years in jail and fined $35,000 in BC Supreme Court in Chilliwack March 2018.
• READ MORE: Chilliwack woman convicted of counselling tax evasion sentenced to 4.5 years jail
In court after the conviction, Anderson denied guilt and never admitted the harm she caused by not paying taxes, indeed she remained defiant to the end claiming the whole case against her was a fraud.
Anderson is now wanted by authorities as she filed to appeal her conviction, but was a no-show for her hearing scheduled for April 17 in the BC Court of Appeal in Vancouver.
• READ MORE: Warrant issued for infamous Chilliwack tax cheat ‘educator’
Her conviction stands and a warrant was issued for her arrest.
As for Porisky, he and Gould’s case has gone on for many years. After the 2012 conviction, they appealed arguing that the trial judge erred in his handling of a decision by them to re-elect to be tried by judge alone. In April 2014, the BC Court of Appeal quashed the convictions and ordered a new trial. That is the trial that ended in the conviction by a BC Supreme Court jury in 2016.
Porisky was found to have failed to pay $274,000 in income taxes and GST while Gould was $27,000 in arrears.
@PeeJayAitch
paul.henderson@theprogress.com
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