Premier mum on Costa Rican tax amnesty

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This article was published 13/05/2021 (1787 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Premier Brian Pallister dodged questions Thursday about his participation in a tax amnesty involving his vacation home in Costa Rica.

The subject came up after the CBC reported that Pallister took advantage of a program in the Latin American country that forgave up to 80 per cent of penalties on unpaid taxes, plus all interest, if scofflaws paid up by a certain date.

The premier made no mention of taking advantage of the amnesty when he showed proof to The Canadian Press in April 2019 that he had paid his taxes.

Late Thursday, after participating in a committee meeting, Pallister told the Free Press he was unaware of the amnesty when he paid his overdue tax bill.

“I called my accountant, pursued it, asked to find out how much we owed and paid it. That’s as far as it went,” he said.

Asked if his Costa Rican accountant could have applied for the amnesty on his behalf, Pallister said: “He may have. I wanted to get rid of the issue and deal with it straight up.”

In April 2018, the Free Press was the first to report that the premier owed luxury taxes on his Costa Rican home.

More than 14,000 people and companies took advantage of the tax amnesty. More than $400 million in outstanding debts were cancelled, according to the Costa Rican government. The list of amnesty participants was made public.

In a report Thursday, the CBC quoted the premier’s spokeswoman as saying that any tax relief provided by the program “would presumably have been offered automatically by the Costa Rican government as the premier did not request to take part in any such program.”

“Any application of an amnesty program or changes to the amount billed to and paid by the premier has not been conveyed to him,” the spokeswoman said in a statement.

Raising the matter in the legislature on Thursday, NDP MLA Mark Wasyliw questioned the premier’s assertion that he didn’t apply for the amnesty.

“This premier dodged his taxes, then he said they were paid. It turns out he got an amnesty. Now the premier is caught in a web that he himself has spun. He tells the media that he had no knowledge of the amnesty and that he did not request to take part in any such program but you had to apply for this program. And we know this premier not only applied for it, he timed his application to maximize his benefit,” Wasyliw said.

Instead of responding to questions in the house about whether he tried to mislead Manitobans, Pallister went on the attack, suggesting that NDP Leader Wab Kinew had not paid all of his taxes.

The premier seemed to be referring to a 2017 demand by a one-time NDP leadership rival of Kinew’s that Kinew release his tax returns. He did so four weeks later.

“I have paid mine,” Pallister said of his taxes. “My life is an open book. But he (Kinew) had not allegedly paid his.”

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca