QUEBEC TOBACCO SMUGGLING
January 1st, 2004
BY PHILIP FINE
CANADIAN tax auditors will try recover up to CDN$1 billion (GBPounds 430 million) from the JTI-Macdonald Corporation of Toronto. The province of Quebec says the company owes it unpaid taxes from the early 1990s on, ironically enough, Export A cigarettes. It says "significant quantities" had left the country only to be smuggled back through the black market. Quebec killed that black market when it slashed taxes in 1994, when it estimated that illegal cigarette sales were costing CDN$573 million in unpaid tobacco taxes a year.
ENDS
CANADIAN tax auditors will try recover up to CDN$1 billion (GBPounds 430 million) from the JTI-Macdonald Corporation of Toronto. The province of Quebec says the company owes it unpaid taxes from the early 1990s on, ironically enough, Export A cigarettes. It says "significant quantities" had left the country only to be smuggled back through the black market. Quebec killed that black market when it slashed taxes in 1994, when it estimated that illegal cigarette sales were costing CDN$573 million in unpaid tobacco taxes a year.
ENDS
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