A Crown prosecutor will likely seek a significant jail sentence for a former North Vancouver man found guilty of counselling fraud by teaching people to evade paying taxes for almost a decade under a discredited scheme.
A sentencing hearing is scheduled next month for Michael Spencer Millar, who was also found guilty in B.C. Supreme Court of making false statements on his tax returns by understating his taxable income by $93,000, and evading income tax and paying GST over several years.
Millar is one of several people in the Lower Mainland who were charged following a Canada Revenue Agency investigation into the Paradigm Education Group.
During a trial before Justice Victoria Gray, court heard the Millar earned fees as an “educator” for Paradigm and showed people who enrolled in a course how to evade taxes through debunked interpretations of the Income Tax Act focusing on the idea of a “natural person.”
According to court documents, investigators seized a number of Paradigm teaching materials found when they searched Millar’s home and storage locker on Fullerton Avenue under warrant in August 2010. Those documents, along with banking records and other Paradigm materials seized from the home of a Chilliwack couple associated with Paradigm, were entered as evidence in Millar’s trial in B.C. Supreme Court in June.
Court heard from one witness during the trial who testified she ended up having to pay back taxes and interest to the Canada Revenue Agency after admitting to the taxman that she’d filed tax returns on the basis of Millar’s teaching.
In a related case, prosecutors are seeking a two-year jail term for a Burnaby man, Keith David Lawson, 46, who was also convicted of income tax and GST evasion, plus counselling others to commit fraud in his role as an educator with Paradigm. A judge is expected to make a decision on his sentence Oct. 31.
Russell Porisky, the Chilliwack man who was the leader of the group, was sentenced in July to five and a half years in prison for similar offences. In that case, court heard Porisky was involved in teaching hundreds of people to evade paying taxes, resulting in a loss of millions of dollars in tax revenue.
