Spare The Compassion

"Why intelligent, education folks would fall prey to this kind of a plan or scheme is baffling.  There is a perfect Yiddish word for this - farkakte".  It's a hare-brain scheme, ill-advised with no possibility of success.  That is exactly what this is."
Leonard Shore, lawyer for Clarke and Mary Margaret Webster

Clarke and Mary Margaret Webster are in their elderly years, still practising dentistry.  As a profession, dentistry is quite remunerative.  They were certainly not experiencing any financial difficulties.  That was then, throughout their professional careers.  More latterly things have changed, they are either very gullible or very greedy, or quite possibly, both.

They had evidently believed everything they learned through attending seminars that taught about the unconstitutionality of government exacting taxes on working cirtizens.  Books, pamphlets, CDs, seminars and the Internet were all tools used by Paradigm Education Group.  Taxing someone's labour, according to Paradigm, runs counter to the Canadian Bill of Rights.

This righteous explication of the taxation system whereby government raises its operating funds to provide services to those whom it serves, seemed to serve the purposes of this upper-middle-class couple very nicely indeed.  The Websters felt that the $31,200 they paid to be educated in the ways of getting around the imposition of filing taxes to be well worth it.

Oddly enough, it was another pair of Ottawa dentists, Tanya Kovaluk and Lee Williams, who introduced the Websters to this sure-fire scheme to defraud the taxman and the tax paying public at large, while satisfying the Websters' urge to retain all of their income sans social obligation to help pay for the services they most certainly use as citizens of Canada.

"This was an out-and-out fraud on the taxpayer and it was motivated by greed and in the circumstances, it was particularly disgraceful" according to Ontario Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland who judged this case of tax evasion to which both Websters pleaded guilty, and disavowed their previous belief in the Paradigm scheme.

They no longer believe taxes to be unconstitutional and a criminal offence by the federal government against the hard-earned income of dental professionals.  They now face a $342, 407 tax bill representing the amount of tax they refused to pay.  As well as a one-year conditional sentence for Clarke Webster, six months for his wife followed by 27 months' probation.

They fear this large bill will threaten their ownership of their home.  Why, goodness me, what on Earth did they do with the funds they failed to pay for taxes on their income?  That considerable income, representing a whopping big tax bill and nothing banked to enable them now to withdraw it all to pay back what they owe?

An obvious instance of personal fiscal mismanagement. Go to the back of the class.  Right, sit over there in the corner, and clap that dunce cap securely on your balding pate.

No hearts bleeding for this pair.