A Christchurch builder has been sentenced to 7 months home detention on tax evasion charges for failing to declare more than $200,000 in tax.
Gary Terence Moss appeared in the Christchurch District Court on 25 September and was sentenced on 1 representative charge and 1 single charge of evading or attempting to evade the assessment or payment of income tax.
Moss arrived in New Zealand from the United Kingdom in 2014 and started working as a builder. His income was taxed at source until 2016, at which time he began working as a self-employed builder.
Since 2016, Moss has not declared any salary or wage income and was ‘force registered’ for GST by Inland Revenue (IR) in 2024. Moss failed to file income tax returns from 2019 until 2022 and in 2023 filed a false income tax return for that year.
Timeline
Bank account statements obtained by IR for accounts linked to Moss showed he had been receiving undeclared income. In May 2023 he received a notification of audit from IR.
On the same day Moss was notified of the audit investigation, he contacted an international relocation company to obtain a quote for moving household goods to Australia.
A timeline of events showed Moss received a call from IR where he said he would file the outstanding returns. Following that call Moss paid nearly $1,700 to a travel agency and an airline, requested an early release from his fixed term tenancy, and filed a false 2023 income tax return.
Moss paid for the cost of international relocation to Australia and left for Melbourne in July 2023. IR made numerous attempts to contact Moss, but he did not respond, despite accessing his myIR account from an IP address in Perth, Australia. Between May and July 2024 Moss accessed his myIR several times but did not open any of the web messages IR had sent to him via MyIR.
In July 2024 IR raised default income tax and GST assessments.
Moss returned to New Zealand in September 2024 and accessed his myIR account from an IP address in Dunedin but again failed to read any web messages.
Shortfall
Charges were laid in September 2024 and at that time IR had calculated Moss’s income tax shortfall to be $267,368.09.
In February this year a tax agent engaged by Moss, filed amended income tax returns for the 2019 to 2023 years. These amended returns were not accepted by IR as they failed to include income received into one of Moss’s other bank accounts.
Moss was sentenced to 7 months home detention and also ordered to pay $20,000 in reparations.