Can my accountant bill me for previous work he agreed to perform for free? Context I can provide more context to the story (question), but I also want to keep it short. I have been paying my accountant for helping with my corporate taxes for the last 4 years in Toronto. I was paying for the corporate taxes about 30-40% higher above the average for the same work my colleagues are paying. In return, this firm has offered to file my personal taxes for free. Which did successfully happen three times previously. It was a gentlemen's agreement and I have no proof of this agreement in writing. At the same time, he naturally never invoiced me for this work either. Question This accountant has suddenly sent me an email saying I never paid for filing my personal taxes with him for the last 4 years. The invoice is asking to pay $350-600 + HST per filing. For myself + my wife. Our taxes were really simple with simple T4 forms, nothing fancy. In fact, I used to use TurboTax and it took me 30-50 minutes to file on my own. So the invoice total is about $1600+ for four previous years of personal taxes for myself and my wife. Can I legally ignore these invoices? It does not make any sense that he sends me invoices for work done 4 years ago. Would really appreciate any advice!
Can my accountant bill me for previous work he agreed to perform for free? No. The difficult part will be for you to prove that he agreed to do the job for free. Hence the importance of having this kind of "gentlemen's" agreements in writing. You have the burden of outweighing --even by means of circumstantial evidence-- the common presumption that professional work is done for compensation, not for free. However, just like it might be hard for you to prove the aforementioned "gentlemen's agreement", it would also be hard for him to prove that you agreed to (or knew, or should have known, you would have to) pay the amount he is billing now. In the event that you are unable to prove he agreed to work for free, you might want to dispute the reasonableness of the amounts he is pursuing so belatedly. It is noteworthy that the work at issue being "really simple" would not be the only factor for assessing how much he may recover. Other factors such as the accountant's qualifications or the market rate for similar services would be weighed in awarding recovery (if any). Can I legally ignore these invoices? It does not make any sense that he sends me invoices for work done 4 years ago. You may ignore the invoices regarding older work, that is, those for which the period of limitations has elapsed. For most cases, section 4 of the Ontario Limitations Act provides a two-year period to bring a claim. Since the accountant himself did the job, and most likely he was --or should have been-- aware of the payments due for his services, he would be unable to prove that his "discovery" of claims (see section 5 of Limitations Act) regarding older tax filings meets the period of limitations. Equivalently, see here the paragraph starting with "For example, if the courts determine that [...]".
Is It Legally Binding? While their customer service sucks, your oral authorization of the charge is legally binding (I take payments that way almost every day in my own business, it isn't an unusual business practice in small professional businesses). You authorize oral authorization of payments over the phone in the credit card agreement that your credit card company sends you every year that you don't read and throw away. The provider has to collect more information for a credit card payment over the phone than they do for an in person swipe in a credit card machine (e.g. your credit card billing address) and they are fully responsible for wrongful charges if they deal with an imposter. By regularly checking your credit card statements, you can confirm that no incorrect charges are present. Tax Issues If you want to take a tax deduction for non-reimbursed medical expenses, you simply need to tote up the amounts your are entitled to from your own records, and put it in the appropriate box on your tax forms. You don't have to attach documentation to your return. If the IRS disputes your payment, you can offer up your credit card statements and your photograph of the receipts, and if necessary, medical records to show that you received the services, to show that the payment really happened and are deductible. Your credit card company's records, reflected in your monthly credit card statements, are considered very reliable for tax purposes. You have the burden of proving that the expense was incurred and is of a type that qualifies for a deduction by a preponderance of the evidence in the event that there is a dispute that is litigated, which means that you must show that it is more likely than not that you incurred a deductible expense of that kind in that amount in that tax year. Privacy Issues While there are financial information privacy issues associated with this transaction, HIPAA, which covers medical records, normally wouldn't apply to a credit card payment that indicates the person paid, the person paying, the account, the amount and the date, but not a description of the medical services provided or to whom they were provided, which is what is normally on a credit card receipt. The financial privacy issues are also partially addressed by the provider's merchant agreement with the credit card company which contains terms requiring them to maintain certain kinds of security with respect to your financial information (which is not to say that the provider actually follows all of the requirements of their merchant agreement scrupulously, which is why data breaches happen all the time in businesses both large and small).
It looks like the gym was allowed to take the money out of your bank account and didn't. They didn't notice that they didn't take your money, so they can't really expect you to notice it. So you haven't done anything that would be criminal. The bigger question is how much you owe them. If you used the gym all the time, like someone paying monthly would do, they will most likely have the right to payment. That's not unlimited, there will be some &quot;statute of limitations&quot; so they can't ask you for 30 years back payments, but with less than two years they probably have a right. If they raised prices, it's unlikely the would have a right to that because they never told you. The situation while your subscription was frozen is interesting. Basically you just walked in, used the gym without paying, but they didn't stop you in any way. I could walk into your gym, ask if it is Ok to use it, and if they say &quot;yes&quot; and don't mention payment, I'm in. So for this time you can argue whether or not you owe them money. Summary: You haven't done anything criminal. You most likely owe them money. About the money, they can take you to court if you don't pay which will cost both sides money. Since you did use their service and other users did pay, the morally right thing would be to pay what seems fair to you, possibly with some negotiation. And legally, you might consider paying them enough to make both sides happy enough so you can stay a gym member and don't get sued for the money.
I don’t understand why you think this is a “3rd party communication” - as I read it it says it’s an email from you. You are most definitely not a third party. Notwithstanding, communication between 3rd parties is not prima facie excluded. For example, correspondence between your company and your accountant (who are both third parties) is likely to be extremely relevant to a family law case. Assuming that it is relevant (which is hard to say without context) and that it doesn’t fall foul of one of the evidentiary rules (hearsay, opinion, privilege etc.) there is no reason why it wouldn’t be admissible.
It is likely that you don't owe any taxes even though you have worked for many years in Brazil. Earned income that is earned outside the U.S. by natural persons who are U.S. citizens (as oppose to entities like corporations) up to a certain amount that is indexed for inflation is excluded from taxation under Section 911 of the Internal Revenue Code. The cut off is $104,100 U.S. per year in 2018 (about 347,000 Brazilian Reals per year). Also, unearned income and any excess earned income can benefit from the standard deduction and personal exemption from U.S. income taxation unburdened by your foreign earned income up to the threshold. This can be quite substantial. Similarly, if you have children, they would benefit from the child tax credit which would reduce your income tax obligation. And, any U.S. federal income tax due on your unearned income to the extent that it exceeds the standard deduction and personal exemption from U.S. income taxation is reduced by any Brazilian taxes you paid on your Brazilian income as a result of the foreign tax credit. The bottom line is that unless you are very affluent and have significant unearned income, it is unlikely that you owe any U.S. income taxes. Even if you do owe U.S. taxes after these considerations, they wouldn't arrest you. You have to be "willfully" violating U.S. tax laws for it to be a criminal offense and this is one small corner of the law where ignorance of the law is an excuse. And, the Internal Revenue Service would first have to send you several notices by mail setting forth the amount that they think that you owe, allowing you to dispute that amount, and the declaring that you owe it, before you have a potentially criminal tax violation that is well defined enough and communicated to you well enough that you can willfully fail to file a tax return or can willfully fail to pay. So no, they will not arrest you and make you pay, at least not until they send you lots of notices which you ignore. On the other hand, if you do owe any U.S. income taxes there is no statute of limitations on collecting those taxes for years in which you were required by U.S. tax law to file a tax return but did not (basically, years in which you owed U.S. taxes). So, if you, for example, won a big lump sum payment playing the lottery when you were 20 years old and owed U.S. income taxes as a result (even though you didn't know it), those taxes could still be collected by the IRS when you are 40 years old since you did not file any U.S. tax return for the year in which you had taxable U.S. income. Finally, under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 enacted in December last year, U.S. taxation of the foreign income of U.S. persons was reformed in the most significant way in the last seventy years or so, and the taxation of U.S. persons on foreign source income is greatly curtailed for 2018 going forward. This is not retroactive, but could mean that as you come into your higher income earning years in middle age, that the taxation of U.S. citizens on their worldwide income is no longer a serious concern for you, even if it would have been under U.S. tax law before then. Enforcing laws that have since been repealed is also rarely an administrative priority for the IRS. It is also hard (to the point of being economically not worth it) to enforce U.S. tax laws against someone who has no U.S. assets. It is also possible that even though you were a dual citizen at birth, that you could have taken an act (e.g. voluntarily serving as an officer in the Brazilian military) that could cause you to lose your U.S. citizenship. So, even if you were a U.S. citizen at birth, it is not 100% certain that you are a U.S. citizen now.
It is rather unclear what the facts are, and the legal answer would depend crucially on those facts. My understanding is that you bought a domain from a provider, and they allowed you to use a web server for some period. It also appears that you don't have a clear understanding of the contract, which may have been made online and you might not have retained a copy of the agreement (which would allow you to look at the terms). The assumption that failing to pay substitutes for explicitly cancelling a service is incorrect. If under the contract you agree to pay a certain amount per year, then you have been racking up charges for some time, and you would need to actually cancel. Ultimately, they could take you to court to force you to pay what you owe, although usually there are less drastic intermediate steps. In court, they would produce their documents to show that you owe money, and your attorney would somehow counter, perhaps by alleging that you had a good-faith belief that the contract had been terminated. It is possible that they simply messed up and failed to send you an invoice earlier, which could explain the lack of invoice. At any rate, the fact that you haven't gotten an invoice does not legally entitle you to avoid paying for the service, whether or not you use it. On the premise that they haven't taken back the domain (seems like they didn't), you can legally use it. However, if you do use it, then that would trash any claim that you believed the contract had been terminated (to argue "I thought it had been canceled" entails "and thus I didn't use the service").
As I understand it, they are required to give notice of an intent to levy. Publication 594 gives their version of what they can do, and how. If you don't want to pay what they claim you owe, you can request a Collection Due Process hearing which means Form 12153. You may receive a CP504 Notice, which seems to be one of two "final notices": it is actually final w.r.t. levying state tax refunds, and is penultimate otherwise. Their page on levying mentions a crucial last stem of sending you a Final Notice of Intent to Levy, which is required according to IRC sections 6330 and 6331 which derives from 26 USC 6330 (most of the notice requirement) and 26 USC 6331. If you get notice CP90 which I think is called Final Notice of Intent to Levy and Notice of Your Right to a Hearing, then, dude, you've been served. There is in fact additional process that they have to do before actually taking, but that as far as I know, is the last part involving notification. Take note of the US Code parts, 26 USC 6330, 6331, because unlike IRS advertising, the US Code states what the law is.
As written, your question seems to ask for legal advice in a specific case. That would be off-topic. If you are asking strictly as a hypothetical: In germany, there is supposed to be the Bestellerprinzip for services of a real state agent (whoever retains the agent pays the fees). This was clarified in the Gesetz zur Regelung der Wohnungsvermittlung as changed in 2015. Landlords and real estate agents are frequently trying to get around it, but getting the legal construction of the contracts wrong would mean a substantial fine.