A West Vancouver dentist with a practice in Burnaby has been given an 18-month conditional sentence and fined over a half-million dollars for tax evasion.
In a July 6 B.C. Provincial Court decision, Peter Balogh was ordered to pay back $578,885 to the Canada Revenue Agency. That represents the full amount the dentist is said to have cheated the CRA out of since 2005, plus interest and penalties, according to a press release from the tax agency.
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“The crux of the argument is that individuals are governed by free will only, and unless they enter into a binding contract with the state — which they have not done — then they cannot be governed by the state’s authority over them,” wrote Vancouver lawyer Kyla Lee in April after a Kitsilano restaurant sought to evade public health orders.
The arguments, says Lee, have been raised to fight everything from taxes or traffic tickets; in the end, courts have unilaterally rejected the plausibility of these arguments.
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