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The taxman cometh

A 'pioneer' in the industry had made a lot of money, and being a Canadian resident, the top tax bracket is 53%. A little quick math and he owed a little over $6 million CDN. Work it backwards and he had earned $12.6 million CDN -- without paying taxes.

So you wonder, what does someone spend $12.6m in one year on.

Hosting? No, they left Exodus owing hundreds of thousands of dollars of unpaid bills.

House? yes, a $300k CDN house that was paid for.

Home Theater? yes, $120k CDN for a home theater, $50k+ CDN for an editing suite.

Two Jeeps

Two Jetskis

Satellite TV without a subscription

Travel, travel and more travel. $40k for a 10 day trip to France, etc.

So, he has a meeting with Revenue Canada and they set up a payment schedule for which he probably made 2 payments. Business was not doing anywhere near what it had been and paying off a $6 million CDN tax bill on top of running a business and paying employees, etc is not simple. After the two payments, no more were sent. Months went by with no contact from Revenue Canada.

Eventually, Revenue Canada did call and wanted to schedule an appointment. The agent didn't require the pioneer to come to the office, he'd even make a house call to rearrange that payment schedule.

The Revenue Canada agent shows up, says "Wow, you have a beautiful house, mind if I take a look around?". So, the agent is shown the house -- the palm reader on the door to the basement, the excavated basement that now had the home theater, the plasma display, the work area, the video editing suite and politely walks back upstairs.

As he's about to walk out the door, the porn guy says, hey, aren't we going to rearrange a payment schedule?

And the guy from Revenue Canada said, "I'm just an appraiser buddy"