Accountant in tax trouble

By Don Fiorvento


And you thought you had tax troubles

North Shore tax consultant David Ingram has been petitioned into bankruptcy by Canada Customs & Revenue Agency (CCRA) for nearly $5 million in outstanding taxes.

The petition was filed in the Supreme Court of British Columbia Tuesday and notes that Ingram has outstanding taxes and related interest penalties for the years 1981, 1982, 1987, 1988, 1992 to 1997, 1999 and 2000. The grand total amounts to $4,853,238.38.

The North Vancouver resident, who operates out of the CEN-TA Income Tax office at Park Royal South, told The Outlook the situation stems from a dispute he had with Revenue Canada that went to court in 1990.

The dispute, he explains, revolves around a cheque for $1 million that a chartered accountant employed by Ingram’s company made out in Ingram’s name but was actually deposited into the account of CEN-TA Operating Co, Ltd.

That accountant later reversed the amount and credited future cheques to the company instead of to Ingram, but Ingram says the damage was already done.

“Three years later auditors of Revenue Canada discovered the reversed entry and decided to tax me on it,” he says.

Despite attempts to explain that the cheque for $1 million was not his own personal money and that the cheque made out to him was for the “royal we,” meaning staff and operations of CEN-TA, the judge ruled against Ingram two years after his case against Revenue Canada was heard.

“Therefore, I now had an 11-year-old $535,000 tax bill which was already over $2 million with interest,” he notes.

Ingram, known in recent years for a daily talk show he hosted on Shaw Cable 4, says that he intended to appeal the decision but due to personal reasons didn’t file the appeal in time.

He called the decision by CCRA to petition him into bankruptcy “really rare,” noting that this is the first time in his 37 years in the tax business that he has actually seen someone dealt with in this manner.

Yet, Ingram says he is somewhat relieved by CCRA’s action because he spent 10 years never knowing what his true financial situation was. Luckily, he added, the decision won’t affect the operations of CEN-TA, which has been owned and operated by his wife Jose Ingram since 1992.

CCRA, with Deloitte & Touche as acting receiver, will now attempt to obtain Ingram’s assets, such as the equity in his North Vancouver home, before closing the final chapter on the ongoing saga.

“In the end it just means I end up bankrupt, I don’t owe any money,” Ingram said.

The bearded accountant, who is usually seen cruising around the North Shore in a beat up Jeep Wagoneer or an old Chevy pickup, added that his friends are now telling him he can finally buy that new car.

NEWS photo Terry Peters
DAVID Ingram, best known to North Shore residents for his eponymous show on Rogers Cable, is faced with a 20-year-old tax bill totaling close to $5 million.

Katharine Hamer khamer@nsnews.com

DAVID Ingram just got dinged for a

 $4.8-million tax bill.

The West Vancouver-based tax consultant, best known to North Shore residents as the longtime host of the Ingram show on Rogers (now Shaw) Cable, was served Tuesday with a petition for a receiving order by the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA).

The petition demands that Ingram turn over "any and all of his personal property" to the CCRA. It relates to a CCRA investigation that began more than 20 years ago.

Ingram's former company, CEN-TA Operating Co. Ltd., was audited by the CCRA in 1985. Tax returns filed between 1979 and 1982 were questioned because of a $1-million cheque that was made out to Ingram personally and mistakenly deposited to his personal account, rather than a company account, he told the North Shore News on Wednesday.

"It's a 20-year-old thing, where they started an assessment in '85," Ingram explained. "They went to trial in 1990. The trial took place over five months. In 1992, the judge ruled against me, and it's taken 10 years for them to move with the receivership.

"I've been in this business for 37 years, and I have never seen Revenue Canada put an individual into receivership. I'm sure they've done it before, but I've never seen it, and that's with offices across Canada. So this is really rare."

At the time of the investigation, Ingram controlled two companies. One was CEN-TA Operating Co. Ltd., which then had 220 employees. The other was a real estate company, David Ingram and Associates Realty, with no employees.

"I can still remember the accountant saying, 'Who do you want the cheque made out to?'" said Ingram, "and I said, 'It doesn't matter.'

"So the money essentially, and there was a letter that went with it, was deposited to the company account. I don't think I ever saw the cheque, it was just one of many cheques. We did over $500- million worth of business in those three years, so a million dollars was irrelevant.

"The chartered accountant who looked after our books - because I didn't do it, the tax office admits I never saw the money - took it to be my personal money and treated it as if I had loaned the money to the company. And when I saw the books she'd prepared, I said, 'I didn't loan any money to the company.' She said, 'Oh,' and reversed it.

"Everything else from that point was just deposited directly to the company, which was properly what it should be.

"When the tax office did an audit, there were two auditors. One, the supervisor, decided this should be taxable to me. It was arbitrary, it was capricious, because her assistant even testified in the courtroom that she didn't think it should be taxable to me."

At the time of the judge's decision in 1992, a tax bill was issued to Ingram for $535,000. By then, the interest on the bill had brought the total owed by Ingram to $3 million.

"I never for a second thought that I would lose (the case)," said Ingram, "because if I thought I'd lose it, I would have sold my house and bought another one in my wife's name or something. As it is, the tax office is going to get the value of the house. They won't get the house, because we'll just buy it out."

Ingram said that under bankruptcy regulations, he and his wife would be given $12,000 out of the equity of their home.

He said that ironically, he and his wife, Jose, had already been considering selling up and moving away from the North Shore.

He said that as of June 29, the total tax bill was $4,853,238, with interest accruing at around $1,000 a day.

"I've offered to settle with them a couple of times," he said, "and I offered to settle with them at times which they would have got as much money or more than they're going to get this way but they haven't settled and they've now moved to put me into receivership.

"Now I could fight the motion for receivership. I'm not going to bother, I'm just going to let it happen and let the thing go sideways."

In fact, in some ways, he calls the CCRA move "a relief. It's finished now."

The petition will not affect the Ingrams' business.

Ingram stopped operating his business in 1992. His wife, Jose, used her credit and began a new operation, under the name The CEN-TA Group. Everything to do with the company, including all of its assets, is under her name.

Ingram says it's now a completely different business.

"This all took place before I married my wife and before we had three children, one of whom is now 19. That's how old it is. I did not even know the lady existed at that time."

At one time Ingram administered as many as 672 offices across Canada and in 13 American states.

Today, he says, "I consider myself a tax consultant. At the time that this took place, I was more of a Colonel Sanders. I owned offices that did tax returns but I didn't do tax returns, and I certainly didn't do the books or records of the company. There were professional lawyers and accountants that did that."

The CEN-TA Group has five offices, including locations in Ottawa, Abbotsford, Surrey and Park Royal. Jose Ingram operates the Park Royal office. The others are run by former partners of Ingram's and his ex-wife. He said he does not receive any payment from the offices.

Ingram hosted his own talk show on Rogers Cable from 1997 to 2001, when he was replaced by Fanny Kiefer, host of Studio 4.

He says that since then he has "just taken a year off," although he has received other offers for media work.

CCRA spokeswoman Faith St. John told the News on Wednesday that due to confidentiality agreements she could not comment specifically on the case. She did confirm, however, that a petition had been filed with the federal court in Vancouver.

St. John said it was rare for proceedings to reach this level.

"We make every effort to arrive at a mutually satisfactory agreement," she said.

Copyright  © 1996-2008 david Ingram
Updated July 20, 2005, All rights Reserved

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