Gagné – Quebec Court of Appeal finds that a promoter could be convicted of evading taxes of others

The taxpayer promoted a scheme, that purportedly permitted RRSP annuitants to extract funds from their RRSPs, that clearly did not work, and pocketed a share of the extracted funds. There was no error in his convictions for tax evasion notwithstanding that there was no evasion of his own taxes. The Quebec Court of Appeal stated:

The Cardoso judgment of this Court…establishes that allowing others, via a stratagem, to evade tax due, constitutes the actus reus of the offence of tax evasion; the offence is not limited to avoiding one’s own tax.

Neal Armstrong. Summary of Gagné v. R., 2017 QCCA 788 under s. 239(1)(d).