Mario Goyette: managing his Strawman for your fun & profit!

[Hilfskreuzer Möwe]

Found a fascinating new judgment out of Quebec: the anti-taxing adventures of Monsieur Mario Goyette:

• Goyette c. Agence du revenu du Québec, 2013 QCCQ 16299: http://canlii.ca/t/g2scz

And since it is in French and nominally incomprehensible to me, as a failure of the Canadian multicultural extravaganza, all I can do is offer this handy Google-generated auto-translation:

• http://translate.google.com/translate?s ... Ft%2Fg2scz

Which, all things said, reads pretty bloody well! Thank you Google!

The adventures of M. Goyette are a first – I believe this is the only reported instance of Freeman-on-the-Land type strategies emerging from Quebec. That’s not to say that Quebec doesn't have OPCA litigants, merely that their style has been a ‘something else’. I should really get around to posting about sometime. But that’s not the only sense in which M. Goyette is a pioneer – I think he has also crafted a unique variation on the usual Freeman-not-paying-taxes strategies.

In 2008 M. Goyette and the Quebec Revenue Agency got into a dispute. The QRA refused to acknowledge $133,518.97 in expenses claimed by M. Goyette as income deductions. Why? Well, those were a broad array of pretty common doing-stuff things (para. 5) such as:

… purchases in big chain stores, restaurant meals, alcohol, the bill payments, taxes and credit cards, gasoline, etc..

I don’t have a clear basis from the judgment to conclude whether these were claimed as employment expenses, business expenses, or on some other basis – but anyway Goyette clearly said he had a right to reduce his income as a consequence of these expenditures.

Why? Well, here’s where things get interesting. It is obvious from the decision that M. Goyette had argued a double/split person distinction between a natural person and a legal entity with a social insurance number (paras. 7, 14, 16-21). But, unlike most OPCA litigants who try to rush away from their malevolent Strawman, M. Goyette took the novel approach of becoming its manager. Goyette argued that as he ‘managed’ his legal person he should be able to deduct the ‘costs’ of that management process, ie. his food, bills, alcohol, etc.: paras. 14, 20.

I think – and I admit I’m hazy on this – that the hook was that MARIO GOYETTE and its associated SIN were earning bucks for the state – but the Strawman could only continue that meaningful economic activity with Mario Goyette managing the ‘living’ half of the double/split person equation. And thus on that basis M. Goyette could ‘bill’ the state for his services – all those living expenses.

Needless to say the QRA didn’t buy it. That wasn’t helped when M. Goyette deployed a foisted unilateral agreement which demanded the QRA rebut his position (paras. 13-15), or when Goyette insisted on a 10 day hearing with numerous expert witnesses, that are thoughtfully detailed in the judgment at para. 11:

- A representative of the Director of Vital Statistics, the concept of the person, act and / or birth certificate as well as the entire process surrounding the creation and purpose of social insurance numbers;

- Louis L'Heureux, a lawyer and expert witness on the harmonization of federal tax law with Quebec civil law on the concept of the person as well as the notion of voluntary and subjugation;

- Normand Leclerc, notary and expert witness on the distinctions between the concepts of individual and legal person and the characteristics of each;

- Marie-Eve Lacroix, lawyer, professor and expert witness on the concepts relating to human rights as well as the allocation of the legal person;

- René Provost, lawyer, professor and expert witness on the concepts relating to human rights;

- Daniel Proulx, lawyer, professor and expert witness on fundamental freedoms, the principles of natural justice and constitutional aspect of the person and the attribution of legal personality;

- Adelle Blackett, lawyer, professor and expert witness, on the relationship between the subjects of law and the concept of discrimination;

- Lucie Lamarche, lawyer, professor and expert witness on economic and social rights;

- A representative of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Quebec, on all accounting operations in support of the claims of the plaintiff as well as the structure set up by the defendant for the purposes of tax returns;

- Luc Godbout, a professor and expert on the economic theories of taxation;

- Pierre Fortin, a professor and expert witness on various aspects of taxation and concepts relating to the rights claimed by the plaintiff;

-. Suzanne St-Cerny, on considerations of tax burdens as well as studies reporting escalation in determining the social factors related to taxation expense.

It’s clear from paras. 37-38 that these people were not volunteers but instead drafted into the cause.

The QRA decided it did not want to play and sought and received an order to strike Goyette’s action as a fatally flawed and frivolous: para. 42.

Justice Massol references Meads v. Meads as the leading authority on OPCA litigation (paras. 23-26), and rejects the double/split person concept as incorrect in law, following a number of decisions from outside Quebec (paras. 27-34):

• the Federal Court - Canada (Minister of National Revenue - M.N.R.) v. Stanchfield, 2009 FC 99, 340 F.T.R. 150 (F.C.)
  
  the Tax Court of Canada - Kion v. The Queen, 2009 TCC 447
  
  the Ontario Superior Court of Justice - Kennedy v. Canada (Customs and Revenue Agency), 2000 CanLII 22837 (ON SC), [2000] 4 C.T.C. 186, 2000 D.T.C. 6524 (Ont. Sup. Ct. J.)

Justice Massol clearly doesn’t think much of Goyette’s argument, the distaste is clear even with this un-nuanced translation:

[ 35 ] The undersigned is of the view, like all decisions consulted, that the applicant's arguments contained in the various documents contain disjointed and devoid of meaning assertions that have no chance of him to succeed before the Court.

[ 36 ] These documents are a collection of baseless arguments that have been qualified by the courts absurd. These assertions, not only do not take the road, but are unintelligible, incomprehensible, meaningless and must be regarded as abusive and frivolous.

[ 37 ] The same tactic is to limit the querulous, not judging by the intention that had the applicant and the person who is, wanting to call more than 12 people or expert strangers to him, which would testified that on matters irrelevant to the merits of the case.

So, a neat judgment in that we see Freemanism enter into a new jurisdiction and get promptly whacked on the noggin in a not uncertain manner. We have a new twist on how to use and abuse your Strawman. Best of all, it is extremely clear that the Quebec courts are very familiar with the kind of scheme and argument in question, and it’s nice to see them reaching out to use jurisprudence from the rest of Canada to make short work of this stuff.

As for Goyette? My attempts to learn about Mario were a total failure. I have no suggestion on how he is linked to the mainstream of Freemanism - but I'm sure the link is out there, somewhere.

SMS Möwe

[Burnaby49]

I think the idea that normal living expenses to maintain the "natural man" are tax deductible because they are necessary to keep the tax paying Strawman alive originated with Fiscal Arbitrators as I related here;

viewtopic.php?f=46&t=9804&p=166192&hili ... rs#p166192

The February 2013 article by David Baines stated;

The event was held by Fiscal Arbitrators, a Markham, Ont.-based firm run by Lawrence Watts and Carleton Branch.

Watts and Branch espoused a variation of the “natural person” theory, which holds that each individual can be divided into two separate persons for income tax purposes: the natural person and the legal person.

The natural person performs the labour required to earn income, and the legal person is the legal entity that the federal government creates through the issuance of a social insurance number.

The person with the SIN number acts as the agent for the natural person, which means that any costs he or she incurs to keep the natural person alive is deductible.

By extension, any personal debts incurred by the SIN holder — such as mortgages, car loans and credit cards — on behalf of the natural person can be carried forward from prior years and claimed as business expenses, reducing or eliminating any taxes that would otherwise be payable.

Revenu Québec is a bit of an anomaly. All of the Canadian provinces have a provincial income tax. On top of that the federal government has its own income tax. In all provinces except Québec the provincial governments do not have a provincial income tax department. Instead they piggy-back on the tax collection efforts of the federal government through the Canada Revenue Agency, my old employer. So when I assessed federal income tax I was also assessing British Columbia provincial income tax. This saves the provinces the cost and effort of having a parallel operation to the CRA doing essentially the same work. When I file my annual income tax return the amount I pay is the total of both income taxes and the federal government remits the provincial portion to the province of British Columbia. Québec has taken all responsibility for administering its own provincial income tax, both assessing and collecting. This done through Revenu Québec. So, while I file only one income tax return each year people who live in Québec file two, a provincial and a federal. These are entirely separate forms. On top of that they are subject to possible income tax audits by both the CRA and Revenu Québec. I'm not aware of any co-ordination between the two organizations but, then again, I know little of how things are done in Québec.

Google auto-translation did an excellent job. Very impressive.

[Hilfskreuzer Möwe]

Mia culpa, Burnaby49! It's really too bad we don't have more material to evaluate whether there is an actual connection between Goyette and Fiscal Arbitrators. Perhaps something will turn up.

SMS Möwe