A Chilliwack-area realtor who fled to Belize with his wife to escape the courts after evading $98,211 in income taxes has been sentenced to 20 months in jail by a B.C. provincial court judge.

But John W. Loosdrecht, 53, will spend only 14 months behind bars, after credit for time served in custody is factored into sentencing.

Loosdrecht will also have to pay the $98,211 owed on the $758,228 in commissions he didn’t declare over a four-year period as an independent real estate agent in the Agassiz-Harrison-Chilliwack area.

Judge M.B. Hicks rejected house arrest for Loosdrecht, noting his “arrogant dismissal” of every citizen’s duty to pay taxes, and his attempt to place his personal assets beyond tax collectors’ reach when he learned he was being audited by Revenue Canada.

“I am not sentencing for his past antagonisms with the Canada Revenue Agency, or for his subsequent absconding in the midst of his trial, or his continued failure to declare income and pay taxes since 2004,” Hicks said in his June 8 reasons for judgment.

“However, I take that pattern of conduct as reason to conclude that any sentence I impose must also, to the extent that it is able to do so, work to specifically deter Mr. Loosdrecht from this kind of conduct in the future.”

The judge said Loosdrecht “sought to evade taxes through the ruse of a concocted parallel identity as a natural person,” which the realtor believed exempted him from taxation.

Tax lawyer Elizabeth Junkin told The Progress “it’s not a rarity” that some people fall for the argument promoted by some so-called tax experts that because legislation specifically includes corporations, that income as “natural persons” can be excluded from taxation.

“There’s a fair number of reported cases,” she said.

Hicks found Loosdrecht allowed his real estate licence to lapse prior to the start of the trial in the spring of 2008, and on Oct. 14, 2008 he and his wife left the country for Belize, leaving a leased vehicle in their driveway.

Loosdrecht did not go to Whistler to prepare for the court hearing as he told his son, Hicks said, “but rather, he put in motion a plan to leave Canada in order to avoid these proceedings.”

The court was told Loosdrecht and his wife had become involved in a property development venture in Belize, which has no extradition treaty with Canada.

In November, Loosdrecht’s wife returned to Canada to attend the birth of a granddaughter, but Hicks noted the family home was also sold at that time for $629,685, netting the couple $95,990 after outstanding mortgages.

That money was converted to U.S. funds, on Loosdrecht’s instructions, and transferred to a New York bank account. Mrs. Loosdrecht then left Canada to return to Belize via Cancun, Mexico.

“Mr. Loosdrecht apparently came to meet Mrs. Loosdrecht in Cancun,” Hicks said, but unlike Belize, Mexico does have an extradition treaty with Canada, and he was arrested by Mexican authorities on Dec. 7, 2008.

After several weeks in a Mexican jail, Loosdrecht waived his right to an extradition hearing and agreed to return to Canada.

Hicks found that Loosdrecht had a “confrontational relationship” with Revenue Canada since 1979 when he failed to report capital gains that led to an audit by the agency.

When his unpaid tax bills reached $20,000, Loosdrecht declared bankruptcy in 1999, and the agency started garnishing his real estate earnings.

But according to Hicks, Loosdrecht continued to file tax returns declaring zero income for the tax years 2001-2004, and again in 2005 and 2006, even though T4 slips showed self-employed commission incomes of $174,653 and $113,155 in those years.

In 2004, Hicks said Loosdrecht’s wife had also overseen construction of a “substantial family home” in Harrison, registered in her name, even though he had declared zero income for tax purposes.

The judge said the Crown had also presented documents in court showing Loosdrecht had traveled to the Netherlands, Hawaii and Prince Edward Island during the years covered by the charges.

When Loosdrecht learned of the Revenue Canada audit in 2004, Hicks said the accused took steps to incorporate a company in Panama and register his home mortgage in favour of that company.

“I found that in this way Mr. Loosdrecht sought to divert a substantial portion of the equity in the family home to an offshore company, which he controlled,” the judge said.

Defense counsel argued the creation of the Panamanian company, and an earlier one in the Bahamas in 1997 were not relevant to the charges.

But Hicks found they “demonstrate an attitude of arrogance on the part of Mr. Loosdrecht towards his responsibilities as a taxpayer” and “help to explain why Mr. Loosdrecht would resort to the widely discredited disguise of the natural person argument in order to evade his obligations to pay income tax, and why it would be that he would abscond in the middle of his trial without any intention of returning to face those charges.”

A warrant was issued for Loosdrecht’s arrest when he failed to appear in court, and the trial continued without him, ending with his conviction on four counts of income tax evasion.

Loosdrecht remains a Dutch citizen, although his family emigrated to Canada in 1973.

rfreeman@theprogress.com