Quatloos!

Predictably enough, extreme OPCA ideology has combined with a crazy guy to produce Canada's first (to my recollection) tax-protesting murderer. The National Post has an impressively detailed article, featuring a photo of the pseudo-court "summons":

http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/02/16 ... le-murder/

Thanks for the article, the Garon murders were a very big deal at the time and it's good to hear they finally seemed to have nailed the guy. I subscribe to the Post but didn't get a copy today. I assume because it is a provincial holiday in Ontario where it is published.

I'm the lowest form of humanity.

"Ottawa police also found his hand-written journal, anchored in the ramblings of a man who wrote that tax collectors were the "lowest form of humanity" and likened them to extortionists."

Hurtful. A very hurtful comment to read in my local newspaper this morning while listening to Bach Partitas by Angela Hewitt and having my coffee. I can only takes some modicum of comfort by looking to the source of the quote, a man currently on trial for torturing and killing three elderly people because of his animus against income tax;

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canad ... le-killing

Ian Bush is finally getting his trial on charges of murdering the retired Chief justice of Canada's Tax Court, his wife, and a friend. You won't see the above quote in the linked article because it is only in the print edition of the National Post.

With luck the trial will reveal his background beliefs on taxes and other issues. Apparently the murder was triggered by his rage against the Canada Revenue Agency and the Tax Court as a result of some tax problem he had. It's currently unknown whether the Tax Court or Judge Garon was involved in his case or what it was about but hopefully the trial will reveal all that. It's going to take a while however since the trial is projected to take two months.

Surprising that he chose a jury trial. Juries aren't generally sympathetic to the premeditated torture and murder of the elderly. Maybe he figures he can fill the jury with the same rage at the injustice inflicted on him by the CRA that he feels. Given my experience I'd say unlikely. I've attended two tax evasion jury trials, Russell Porisky and Michael Millar. In both cases the juries came up with guilty verdicts after only a few hours of deliberations.

The article makes no mention of a defense lawyer. Is he pro se?

Dr. Caligari wrote:The article makes no mention of a defense lawyer. Is he pro se?

I noted that too and checked. He has a lawyer.

I actually ran into Ian Bush many years ago when he was employed at the mill in Gold River. I guess the constant rain eventually got to him since he left his employment under a bit of a cloud:
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canad ... ple-murder
That was one trip I hated with a passion - death drive in from Campbell River, get soaked bringing my gear into the mill, work in the high humidity of a wet end pulp lab, then drive to Port Alice, hoping to be there by midnight, which is rumoured to be the wettest spot in Canada. BTW, for those interested, Google Maps will give you a route for the trip which at the wrong time of the year may result in another of those "man survives two weeks stranding after taking wrong turn" news stories.

It was while in British Columbia that he launched the human resources consulting firm he continued to operate until his arrest on the home invasion charges in December — Bush and Associates Consulting, which lists some fictitious people as employees. He lost money in the business, according to exclusive tax documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen.

He tried to deduct these losses, as well as some moving expenses, on his income taxes after he left B.C. to take a job with the public school board in his hometown of Dryden in Northern Ontario.

When the Canada Revenue Agency refused to allow these deductions, Bush filed an appeal in the Tax Court of Canada. That litigation would lead to his first contact with Garon — a disturbing fax sent in 2001 from a made-up court that summoned the court’s chief judge to Bush’s home.

That's his big tax battle? He tried to claim some deductions from a business that I'm guessing never had any clients? I was expecting bankruptcy and ruin. I'd guess from this that he was claiming a lot of what were really personal expenses, rent, auto, meals, and had them all disallowed. He appealed this to the Tax Court and his appeal was dismissed. If so very much a bread and butter issue with CRA and the Tax Court, they get dozens of appeals on claimed expenses every year. Artists with no sales, unpublished authors who go to Bali for research, people who say they are planning to start a business but haven't got around to it yet but are incurring start-up expenses that are really, really legit.

I checked the Tax Court website. No record of Bush having a hearing. Not unusual with personal expense claims. The court disallows them but no released decision.

I did an audit right at the beginning of my career on a guy claiming farm expenses. He was a full-time executive in a major Vancouver company and had acreage in Richmond, a Vancouver bedroom community. He lived in a mansion. When I drove into his driveway there was a hand-drawn sign at the entrance saying "eggs for sale". His expenses all seemed personal. Heat, light, power, and insurance on the mansion, his daughter's riding school fees and horse feeding and stalling, car expenses, things like that. I asked to see his farm operations. He took me out back and showed me how his property abutted a riding school with a gate between. There was a shed that he said was a stall for his daughter's horse but it had died. So they had bought another horse which was currently being stalled at the riding school. I asked how that was farming. He gave me a line about how they were going to start a horse breeding operation and were starting small with one horse which his daughter had to ride to keep it in shape hence the riding school fees. They wanted to keep it in the shed but hadn't got around to it yet. I asked about the eggs for sale. The chickens had all died but they planned to get new ones. I disallowed the lot and he decided not to appeal it.