A former Chatham resident who, at one point, faced 120 charges related to income tax preparation and illegal deductions has been sentenced to 18 months in jail.
Anthony McPhail pleaded guilty to not only setting up an illegal deduction scheme for people whose taxes he was preparing, but for also failing to declare the money he was paid as income. Justice Bruce Thomas accepted a guilty plea on six of the charges.
"This is a fairly large income tax evasion case. Most cases don't proceed by way of indictment," says prosecutor Edward Posliff. "When you look at somebody like that who has never been involved with the criminal justice system before and he's going to go to jail, he's going to go to the reformatory, that's a serious deterrent."
The maximum sentence would have been five years. McPhail also has to pay $323,402 in fines.