Canada Revenue Agency seeks back taxes from aboriginal employees
OTTAWA The Canada Revenue Agency has been aggressively collecting back taxes from a group of mostly low income aboriginal women who lost a long running legal battle to be exempt from paying personal income taxes because their employer was situated on a reserve.
Native Leasing Services, an employee outsourcing company that has its headquarters on Six Nations of the Grand River, a reserve near Brantford, Ont., is seeking a remission order from National Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier who would have to recommend it to cabinet for approval on behalf of 3,916 former employees.
“Most of the applicants live on or near the poverty line . A large portion of these employees will never be able to pay the tax assessments that have been made against them,” Jim Fyshe, a lawyer working pro bono for Native Leasing Services, wrote in the application for a remission order filed in June 2013.
The employees, whose annual income at Native Leasing Services averaged about $27,000, according to Fyshe, are being pursued by collections officers who are putting liens on their homes, garnishing their wages and clawing back benefits for years of personal income taxes after the courts supported a decision by Canada Revenue Agency to reinterpret the Indian Act.
One of them is Ramona Dunn, 53, who the Canada Revenue Agency says owes nearly $94,000 in taxes, fines and interest for the five years she worked as a registered nurse and diabetes educator at Anishnawbe Health Toronto, where she was technically an employee of Native Leasing Services.
Dunn, who grew up in poverty at one point living in a shack behind a gas station with her mother, a residential school survivor said she took the job at the non profit agency for a smaller salary than she would have earned at a hospital.
“I was willing to work for less money than my skill set would have given for me just for the chance of working in my community and helping my people,” Dunn says from her home in Exeter, Ont., adding the tax exemption, which she still believes she has a right to as a status Indian, helped make up some of the difference in take home pay.
Now Dunn, whose severe arthritis prevents her from working full time, has remortgaged her home and the Canada Revenue Agency threatens to put a lien on her property.
“Never in a million years would I have thought they would go after me,” says Dunn, who has started an online petition and wrote a letter to Lebouthillier about her case, receiving a pro forma response on Nov. 24 assuring her officials would review her issues.
Philippe Brideau, a spokesman for the Canada Revenue Agency, said they could not comment on individual cases due to privacy reasons, but said remission orders are considered on a case by case basis.
“Each request is carefully reviewed by the CRA to determine if the collection of a tax or enforcement of a penalty is unreasonable or unjust or if it is in the public interest to grant remission,” wrote Brideau, who did not make Lebouthillier available for an interview.
“The filing of a request for remission does not create a suspension of collection action for a tax debt. The CRA makes every effort to reach a mutually acceptable payment arrangement based on the taxpayer’s ability to pay before proceeding with any collection actions,” Brideau wrote. Group of companies, was set up in the 1980s by First Nations activist Roger Obonsawin and his partner, Ljuba Irwin, as a way for First Nations people and non profit organizations serving the aboriginal population to exercise their right to be exempt from income taxes under section 87 of the Indian Act.
Native Leasing Services would hire the workers as a centralized agency taking care of payroll and other administrative tasks but the work would actually be done for the clients based off reserve.
The Canada Revenue Agency later changed its guidelines and entered into an agreement with Native Leasing Services to clarify them through a series of test cases in court.
Irwin says Native Leasing Services was under the impression that should they lose what ended up being a long and protracted legal battle, the past debts would be forgiven.
That ended up not being the case.
25, 1983 Nowegijick v. The Queen
The Supreme Court of Canada rules that Eugene Nowegijick, a member of Gull Bay Indian Band in northwestern Ontario, has the right as a status Indian to be exempt from paying taxes on his personal income under section 87 of the Indian Act because his employer, the Gull Bay Development Corp., was situated on the reserve, even though he performed duties as a logger off the reserve.
The Canada Revenue Agency, then known as Revenue Canada, interpreted the ruling to mean employees of Native Leasing Services, working off reserve, must pay income taxes. These new guidelines would come into effect Jan. 1, 1995, which set off a political battle especially as then prime minister Jean Chr broke a promise he made while in opposition the year before culminating with Obonsawin and other indigenous activists occupying fifth floor of a Revenue Canada building in downtown Toronto in December 1994. Dieser barocke komplex wird als kirche und hausarbeit fazit schreiben kloster genutzt
