Tyrone Benskin Suspended From Duties as NDP Critic

He is just another lying, cheating, stealing politician.

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He owes taxes and even after being elected to a hundred grand a year job he still did not take care of his obligations. That is a character flaw not poverty. I know lots of people in the arts who pay their taxes ever year and none of them are rich.  The aspiring artists I know don't pay much for taxes because they are too poor.  The larger the tax bill he owes the more it points to him not being poor but merely a run of the mill tax fraud hiding his income from the taxman.  I also know trades people who make marginal incomes and some of them also don't pay their taxes.  I call them tax frauds as well.

I haven't seen him in QP. Is he still around?

How do we check attendance records?

it has happened to me (after being shafted by a deadbeat spouse) and I know many other people struggling in "creative professions" facing similar crap. In France, there is a big struggle ongoing to get employment rights and the equivalent of UI for such workers. I am gobsmacked at the reactionary, judgemental postings here.

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Who is calling it fraud? I think this looks like a question of neglect...

We assume he's done nothing to battle the debt, but that assumes that it wasn't higher at one point. He's paying it off now and is paying the price for his neglegence, he lost his deputy critic role as punishment for not getting on this sooner.

I'm going to check to see who gets his post.

It is not fraud. Not even close.

But I agree that his pleas of poverty and duress are at best overdone.

If you stumble into a stable $170K income, and owe $58K, Revenue Canada would be very reasonable in working out how you pay it.

There are LOTS and LOTS of otherwise perfectly admirable people who live hand to mouth, no matter how much their income increases. Even though I watch this at painfully close range, and know the stupid mental games people play n themselves doing it, at bottom I have a hard time grasping the stupidity of it.

But it is all too common.

But gross stupidity, even gross stupidity that effects other people, is still not fraud.

Yeah, Benskin's been a MP for 2 yrs. You would think that in all that time making a good salary he would have got his financial house in order and paid back the taxes.

As to the timing of this coming out- of course it's fishy. Whether or not it happened in this case, this is the kind of thing that parties know about, but save to put into circulation.

But it is still a valid point about doing the dirt diggers job for them: providing them with material, or not, over things an individual has  a lot of control over.

Ken, of course the timing of these announcements are fishy yet all political parties play the same damn tricks. Look at all the NDP press releases, they are all tied into making the other parties look bad.

The NDP has been playing the same game with the veterans and their affairs as a good example.

KenS wrote:

He didnt have to have paid the taxes back by now. If he had an agreement with Revenue Canada, no one would have heard a thing about the affair.

I believe it's Revenue Quebec who's garnisheed his MP's salary (Quebec collects it's own share of income tax).

It isnt "provincial" taxes in Quebec- it is bothe federal and provincial.

And a lot of the $58K would be penalties. [Which in practice becomes a carrot for cooperating with them. If you behave, the degree of penalties isnegotiable.]

So  it isnt as much inclome behind that as you might think. Still not exactly poverty.

But note what I said above about people not good at managing money- which IS a high proportion of the population, and cutting across class lines.

Anyone who has been self-employed knows you can make a bucket of money on contracts, and if it is considerably more than the year(s) before, they are not hitting you up for quarterly payments comparable to what you are now bringing in. Living chronically hand to mouth- as many of all incomes do- what comes in, gets spent. and you dont have to be profligate or have expensive habits for it to just go.

So the bonanza money comes. All the long standing dry puddles get filled with water for a bit. The money tree stops shaking.

And then the tax bill comes.

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

how much money do you have to make to end up owing $58k in PROVINCIAL taxes. A fair bit I think-- enough to forget about this poverty thing.

Not as much as you think if it was spread over a five year period as seems to be the case here. Someone who is self-employed or working freelance does not have taxes deducted at source and has to pay taxes on their income all at once when they do their returns. You would not have to earn all that much money to owe $10,000 a year for 5 years.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

As far as I am concerned you can either be a tax evader or a tax avoider.  Tax avoiders use the rules to avoid paying taxes. Tax evaders ignore the rules and do not fill out proper tax forms often either under reporting or not reporting their income. A tax evader is a fraud artist.  A sitting MP who has been engaged in tax evasion for over 5 years before being elected and then ignores a court case over the tax bill is unsuitable to be an MP in anyone's party.

There is no evidence that Benskin ever misreported or underreported his income. Or even that he was late filing, although he may well have been. All we know is that he has failed to pay the taxes assessed on his returns in a timely fashion. This is not tax evasion, or tax avoidance, it is being a slow payer of bills. You could perhaps justifiably call him a deadbeat, but nothing much worse.

What a disgrace. Benskin should have been suspended from caucus immediately. He's a tax cheat and a fraud who avoided his obligations- among them, to appear in court. I wonder how long he has been hiding this. That he would cry poverty when he owes $58k and has been earning $160k for the last two years is an insult to the poor. I wonder if Brian Topp knew this about Benskin when he recruited him. What's more if he didn't report it on his candidate screening form he is a liar to the party as well. I'm disgusted! 

I looked up his movie and Tv career on IMDb, it is quite impressive. Over a dozen high profile movie, TV and video games spots since 2006. It does not appear he is the poor actor you make him out to be Lagatta.

I am pretty sure he has made more money than I have, yet I pay my taxes on time.

lagatta wrote:

By the way, kropotkin, many people persecuted by Revenue Canada are not "fraud artists" but simply people incapable of repaying a debt and terrified of the powers that be. As an anarchist, or whatever, you should show at least some compassion to ordinary people caught up in that state machinery.

He is not an ordinary guy. He stood for office to represent his riding and won.  If he was an ordinary guy we wouldn't be having this conversation.

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He must have been hiding his tax troubles from the party when he filled out the vetting forms. Owing over $50,000 to the tax man is a red flag for those vetting candidates that I would hope would not have been ignored.

He didn't pay his taxes, he didn't report it to the party and he didn't show up in court to deal with it. He also introduced a Bill as an MP in which he had a blatant and obvious conflict of interest.  He deserves nothing but disdain.

Quote:

Since being elected, Benskin had fought for tax changes in cases like his.

He presented a private member's bill, C-427, which was rejected by the governing Tories. It would have averaged out certain people's earnings over a period of years, so the tax hit would not suddenly spike in an occasionally prosperous one.

He described the bill last year as an attempt to help independent artists who can't access Employment Insurance and struggle with a "feast or famine" cycle.

"This is a deeply personal project for Mr. Benskin, who has been an artist for over 30 years," he said in a statement last year.

"C-427 is born of an intimate understanding of the numerous and pressing challenges faced by contemporary Canadian artists.

http://www.canada.com/news/loses+role+because+lengthy+history+nonpayment...

 He was upfront that it was of personal interest to him. I support that bill 110 percent and its not just artists caught in that bind, but anyone who has a large year to year variance.

 It happens, its minor and has happened to family of mine and he's not a millionaire, just an ordinary person if more famous.

 I forgive him.

s 

Actually don't assume I do not know: http://www.revenuquebec.ca/en/a-propos/pen-inter/penalite.aspx

So 17% could be penalties if you max out on penalties.

So those saying it is not as much money as I think did you calculate it?

If you earned $52,000 a year with only the most basic of deductions this would come to about $8320 plus perhaps $3000 in pension payable if you were self employed= $11,320. Since there were 4 years we multiply this by 4= $45,280 per year plus penalties= $52,977 plus interest would come to about the $58,000.

This is if the guy was self employed and all was pensionable income (which is unlikely) and had no deductions. You see the only way you get a bill this high over just four years is minimum earnings average over $50,000 a year while making absolutely no payments. Then two years of earning $160k a year and making absolutely no payments.

There are other ways to get a bill this high but they involve:

a) earning more income still and perhaps paying some but not all tax

b) misreporting over a long period and getting assessed owing an amount like this

c) using sales tax trust funds collecting but not remitting

No matter how you look at it -- you have to make a lot of money to owe Revenue Quebec almost $60k in just 4 years.

It is a bit insulting to the province of Quebec to suggest different in my view. They have tax but are not all medieval about it.

For what it is worth I come from a family of artists who have had tax trouble in Quebec at times so I am not completely ignorant of all this. I have also owed taxes myself but nothing like this kind of number. You have to make a lot of money to owe a lot in tax. That is how the system works.

I also have known poverty and know what real poverty is and the difficulties of poverty among artists and am annoyed that these arguments are being brought to here. Poor artists don't pay this much in tax. Period. This is not about poverty.

There are artists who don't make that much who have income peaks and valleys and can have tax trouble but in these numbers they would not call themselves poor. Given that there are thousands and thousands and thousands of artists making under $20,000 a year this is really a kind of a sad joke. The majority of artists are much, much poorer than anyone who could make this kind of debt. Please do not make their situation a part of this as it diminishes their very, very real problems. OK? And please don't tell me what number I am thinking if I have not put it out there.

ETA: If you owed almost 60k in Quebec taxes your total tax bill would need to be over $100k even accounting for pension (provincial in Quebec), health tax etc. Perhaps some here are thinking of $60k total in tax rather than just Quebec tax at that amount. Also we don't know what the original tax bill was -- just that he still owes almost $60k now after six years two of which would have earned him something close to $300k since the tax issue started.

Now I am not lacking sympathy-- we don't know the facts there could be personal issues that can delay returns or other financial problems. I am merely reacting to the poverty and poor artist stuff and that is an inadequate and in some respects insulting explanation here. He also has only been dumped from shadow cabinet not caucus. I think that is the least that could be done as he simply cannot face the people in 2015 without this cleared up otherwise he will surely lose his seat-- given the recent political news this kind of thing is very unhelpful to the party.

I don't know how the vetting goes but I suspect there was little vetting of candidates that were not given much of a hope either to win or even to get much attention. I would not blame the party too much in these circumstances. The removal from shadow cabinet looks like the right move-- less would be too little and more would do more damage to the party as well as him. He has done some damage and owes the party membership some kind of explanation. Owing $58k in taxes while standing for a party does not give you the right to say this particular problem is private.