Conrad Black loses bid to have Supreme Court of Canada hear case over millions in back taxes

The Supreme Court of Canada has dismissed Conrad Black’s bid to have his multi-million-dollar battle with the Canada Revenue Agency over back taxes heard by the country’s highest court.

The Supreme Court of Canada has dismissed Conrad Black’s bid to have his multi-million-dollar battle with the Canada Revenue Agency over back taxes heard by the country’s highest court.

The author and former media mogul has been fighting the Canada Revenue Agency for years over whether he was considered a resident of Canada in 2002 for the purposes of the Income Tax Act and, therefore, owed the CRA what’s believed to be more than $5 million in back taxes.

In a decision released Thursday, the top court dismissed his leave to appeal a lower court ruling that said he was, for income tax purposes, a Canadian resident at the time and owed the Canada Revenue Agency taxes on income earned. The Supreme Court also ordered that Black pay the federal government’s costs in the case.

An earlier federal Tax Court decision deemed that Black was a Canadian resident in 2002 and owed the CRA taxes on income earned.

Black’s lawyers argued that under the Canada-United Kingdom Income Tax Convention, he was, for tax purposes, a resident of the U.K. in 2002. They appealed the decision to the Federal Court of Appeal.

In a decision last fall, the appeal court upheld the Tax Court ruling and said Black should pay taxes on all income earned outside the United Kingdom, not just his Canadian income.

Black then sought to appeal his case to the Supreme Court of Canada, but his bid was rejected in a judgment Thursday from Justices Marshall Rothstein, Thomas Cromwell and Michael Moldaver.

The Canada Revenue Agency had pursued Black in court for more than 10 years to get the taxes it believed it was owed.

At issue in the case was the interpretation of the Canada-United Kingdom Income Tax Convention, a 1978 agreement intended to save citizens from double taxation while living abroad.

The CRA argued that, after a reassessment, Black owed Canadian taxes on $2.8 million in income, $1.4 million in benefits from use of Hollinger Inc.’s private aircraft, $326,000 in taxable dividends and $571,000 in other benefits.

Black was a resident of the U.K. from 1992 to 2002, running the Daily Telegraph newspaper and famously giving up his Canadian citizenship so that he could be appointed to the House of Lords.

In 2002, he earned income from the United States but Black had argued that, as a resident of the U.K., he wasn’t required to pay tax in Canada on the items listed by CRA.