I’ve been trying to avoid this day for a while, dear reader, but both myself and TCL now have suddenly been pushed into a corner with few options.

Before I begin, I should point out that none of what you’re about to read is intended to be humorous, ironic, exaggerated, or untrue – I have ample documentation and evidence to support every single claim and I don’t find anything funny about the situation. I’ve tried to maintain some levity on TCL, even when dealing with heavy subjects, but in this case I just can’t. I’ve had just about enough of being ground into the dirt and treated like sub-human shit.

Up until this Friday my issues were mostly personal so I’ve tried to avoid bitching too much about them, but now they’ve coalesced together to pose a very real threat to not only my own existence, but also to the existence of Toronto City Life.

So please, if you’ve enjoyed visiting the blog over the past year and a half, if you’ve enjoyed the content on any level, if you’ve found the topics to be insightful or at least to provoke some thought or discussion, then I urge you to continue reading, re-blog, re-post, Tweet, and disseminate this post as much as you can. Send this to your friends, co-workers, and anyone else you think might be able to help (and there’s plenty to help with). If ever you’ve thought about supporting Toronto City Life in any way, now is the time to step forward. The situation is indeed critical, and my fate, as well as that of Toronto City Life, hangs in the balance.

Your help is urgently needed!

My Tax Problems

Okay, I have to be honest – the most recent situation is in many ways my fault. As a web developer I’ve come into contact with a lot of companies. A number of them I worked for as a full-time employee, for some as a contractor with a registered business. I guess you can probably guess that during my time as a contractor I didn’t remit taxes to the government, hence the title of this section.

Over the past 8 years or so this probably totals about $25,000 to $35,000 – I’m guessing because it’s been difficult for me to get an accurate number from the government. But, truth be told, I owe the government something, and it’s probably no small sum.

I might argue whether or not I “owe” the government anything since I don’t drive, haven’t been to the hospital since I can remember, and basically don’t make use of any goods or services without paying for them directly (and being taxed on them to boot). But you know what? I never once shirked away from paying those taxes. Not always voluntarily, mind you, but I never raised a fuss otherwise.

For a good chunk of my professional life I earned around $75,000 per year so I always fell into the higher tax brackets. That’s a bit of a moot point because that money was deducted off my paycheque like everyone else but, to be honest, I felt I was paid fairly handsomely for my services, so I’m not complaining. Most of that money went toward paying off debt incurred during my marriage, and toward maintaining our married lifestyle in a wasteful old rural house (heating oil during the winters alone nearly bankrupted me). I can honestly say that if it wasn’t for my wife at the time, I never would’ve lived there, as nice as it was in the summers. And I believe my ex would probably say the same thing: I moaned about the cost of living there a lot.

However, the intermittent contract work finally caught up with me, having made the fatal flaw of filing my income tax returns, and the government quickly came after me with a voracious appetite. I got the usual collection-agency-style pressure tactics – pay it all now, ask everyone you know, etc., etc., or face the consequences. After about two weeks of trying to reach the Canada Revenue Agency, and a further month of trying to come to some sort of reasonable arrangement, I was stumped by a generally inability to actually repay the government. When I visited my bank I was told there would be no way to send money directly from my accounts (no problem if you owe recent taxes but otherwise… ), and that I would have to pay for third-party money orders or issue personal cheques. And because I owed money under my business, personal cheques weren’t acceptable.

Still, I managed to send a couple of cheques before I completely forgot about it, not to mention that at that point I was once again working as an employee and the repayments would then have exceeded my income. Still, shame on me – I forgot and I didn’t follow up. I have no excuse other than a shoddy memory and, occasionally, no money.

For a few years, nothing really happened. I kept working, paying my already exorbitant taxes, and just generally remaining ignorant of the elephant in the corner. But, as I had always subconsciously expected, the government returned with a vengeance and decided to start garnishing my salary.

At this point I should point out that this happened pretty much out of the blue, no warning. One day I received my pay stub only to discover that 47% of my income was now gone, just like that. I checked my phone records to see if the CRA had tried to call me, you know, to warn me or something – no they hadn’t. I checked my email accounts for the same thing – also a negative. And to this day I’ve yet to receive a letter in the mail from the feds to this effect, so that line of communication wasn’t used either. In fact, I had to go through my employer who had received all the details (not me), about my situation just so I could get a rough estimate of how much I owed.

But I wasn’t about to complain. I’ve made no claims on any income tax returns, no GST refunds, etc., so I basically acquiesced to giving the government as much as I could. In fact, my Human Resources manager at the time was surprised at my reaction to suddenly having my pay cut almost in half. I figured, yeah, I knew this was coming and if the government was going to force me to pay them this amount quickly, so be it. I adjusted my lifestyle and went on my way. To date, I estimate that I’ve paid close to $20,000 through the “accelerated” program and other unclaimed federal taxes. Again, getting exact figures has been difficult, but I certainly don’t feel like I’ve been evading taxation.

Anyhow, I continued this until the point where I decided I needed to leave the industry, at least as a full-time employee, altogether.

The Last Company I Worked For

As you probably already know, dear reader, I was a professional Adobe Flash developer for many years. I say “was” because at the end of February of this year I made the decision to quit the industry for good. This wasn’t because I hate writing software – in fact, I still love Adobe Flash and web development in general. It’s the “employee” part of the equation that I find so distasteful. Plus, I wanted to have a genuine go at trying to run Toronto City life full time.

The last company I worked for, henderson bas (that’s how they spell their name), are responsible for pushing me to the brink and beyond; they had a very strong influence over my ultimate decision.

Companies I’d worked for prior to that weren’t exactly shining beacons in managerial excellence or often even common sense. You’d think it would be obvious that the planning phase of a project — any project, really — comes before the production phase, but not to some people. But, although I may have found my experiences with these businesses frustrating, that’s simply a matter of disagreement between me and them so I would never mention their names publicly, even if those businesses are involved in industries that could be viewed, at best, as shady under Canadian and U.S. laws.

Now, I know, no employer’s perfect, but while the companies I worked for had problems they still attempted to deal with employees more or less as human beings. But in the case of henderson bas, the company actually treats its employees illegally under Ontario labour laws, and easily worse than I’ve been treated in any job I’ve ever had. I initially thought that maybe it was just me, but my manager and henderson bas’ creative director, Ryan Wolman, in no uncertain terms told me that the company had operated this way for years, that this was the norm in the industry, and that they had no intention of changing. This even after I pointed out that employees have rights under Ontario labour laws, and after citing numerous specific sections that were being violated.

During my month there I was forced to work three weeks straight without a break. By this I mean 7 days per week, 16 to 18 hour days, sometimes with only a few hours of sleep in between. Now, in fairness, I was duly and clearly warned that the hours would be crazy, and not being a newcomer to the industry, I was expecting it. Although I was understandably cranky more than a few times during that month, I nevertheless endured. I endured because I assumed there would be some light at the end of the tunnel.

I was brought on to develop the online game for the Tim Hortons Roll Up The Rim To Win campaign that was launching in March – a clear deadline that I knew had to be met. And the deadline was met – the project went out on time and bug-free – the only project to do so that month, I believe. I don’t think most projects, web development or otherwise, could boast that. At the risk of sounding pompous, my involvement in that project was extremely important – I alone wrote the game, integrated the registration system, and basically created the crucial online portion of the campaign.

At the end of this grueling schedule I asked for some time off – three days, to be exact. I figured the budget for the campaign had already been set so asking for money beyond my regular salary wouldn’t go over well. I thought I would at least get a break and having clocked an extra two week’s worth of time, a few days seemed quite reasonable. And I sorely needed it; there were times during that month where I suffered from blurry vision, headaches, and even tightness and pain in my chest (heart!). Extreme sleep deprivation, overwork, no breaks or even time for breaks, that takes its toll quickly. I should, however, be fair: they did offer to feed us if we stayed for more than 12 hours in the office, and since we typically left at 3 or 4 in the morning, they provided taxi chits (after a 3-hour “rest”, however, we had to find our own way back to the office).

I really don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that I put in close to 6 weeks’ worth of time in that intense 4 week period at the end of February. Unfortunately, I don’t know the exact number of hours because the project managers, my manager, and pretty much everyone I spoke to insisted that the time-tracking system (essentially an electronic punch clock), not be used — that should’ve been a red flag, in hindsight — and the project I was working on didn’t exist in the tracking system anyway so I couldn’t have entered my hours even if I wanted to.

Doesn’t matter, I was there, I blogged about it intermittently, and the other developers I worked with would regularly express surprise that I has spent yet another all-nighter / all-weekender in the office, so there’s no doubt about what really took place. Plus, there were others who did similar schedules to mine — still less, and as contractors (so they actually got paid for it), but I wasn’t alone.

At the end of that first month they’d already booked me on the next project, including the very next weekend. Based on my experience, proven track record, etc., I was very confident that a few days off would not put that next project in any sort of jeopardy.

Dear reader, you would not believe the vitriol that Ryan delivered when I made the request. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that this schedule was expected of me (which was partially true), that I wasn’t eligible for ANY time off for at least another two months when my probationary period would be over, that I wouldn’t be paid for or get any vacation time for all the extra hours I put in (i.e. I was doing it for free), and that by even asking for a break I was in fact being quite rude. This despite the fact that every other person involved in that project was already off on vacation at that point!

Let me re-iterate: I was told that I would be expected to work 7 days a week, 16 to 18 hour days, with no rest or remuneration other than my standard salary which was already pay cut from my previous job (being promised that what was lacking in salary would be made up for by the company’s general awesomeness), that this was normal in the industry, and that this was the first time anyone had ever complained about this.

I found that very difficult to believe since in my initial interview (which hadn’t been long before), Ryan admitted that three other developers had just left (why I was being interviewed), citing displeasure with the working conditions. And even more damning was a company-wide meeting later in the month where the big boss stated that changes were being implemented so that there would be no further accusations of the place being run like a “sweat shop” — the exact words from her mouth.

Ryan grudgingly gave me two days off, for which I had to sign a vacation request form, and after I’d returned from the “vacation” Ryan’s tone was even more terse, rude, and unapologetic. I asked where in my contract, exactly, I had agreed to give up my basic human rights as an employee, to which I received no response (of course I hadn’t).

For me it was a no-brainer; if I worked another two weeks in that sweat shop – and that really is the most correct way of describing the company – I would’ve been dead or at least in the hospital. The working conditions were, and most likely still are, illegal, and every indication was there that things would only get worse for me. Or was I being unreasonable for asking for more than 3 hours of sleep per night? Was I being a jerk to think that, all told, I was actually being paid less than a minimum hourly wage for my work? (Should I even mention that I was expected to take on extra duties as a “senior” level developer?)

In any event, I’d decided I’d had enough with frustration and employers who treat their staff like shit. So I quit and I’ve been unemployed since – no jobs, no contracts, no income of any kind.

My Assets

Haha! What assets?

I had a tiny, undervalued RRSP that I cashed in (and, of course, paid crazy taxes on), so that I could eat while unemployed.

Beyond that I might’ve had a car to lean on but both my ex-wife and Honda Canada conspired to deprive me of that opportunity — I’m convinced it was a team effort. It was a lease for a 99 Civic from Pickering Honda since, at the time, I lived in the northern end of that city. I never drove it (well, almost never), however, my wife at the time did.

When we split two years ago, I decided it made a lot more sense for her to keep driving the car until the lease expired. I’d had a car she paid for at the time, a Volkswagen, but since I was moving downtown the thing didn’t see much action. So I put the car which, admittedly, had seen better days, in her care and waited patiently for the lease to expire so that I could get the value out of my own car. I even clearly offered to split any differences with her so that she wouldn’t feel cheated for the lesser value of her car – a lesser value that my driving imposed on it. I don’t think she would’ve gotten much for the Volkswagen, but she left it sitting in her driveway for half a year and the thing naturally seized up, so she had to pay to have it towed away instead of selling it and making a few bucks as we’d intended. I warned her that it, like most cars, it needed to be started regularly, but beyond that I didn’t care – her car, her problem.

Unfortunately, the VW became her excuse (one among the many), for getting involved in a long and convoluted tale that, if you ask me, amounts to nothing short of fraud and theft. Allow me to elaborate.

The lease on the Honda expired in mid-November 2009. The ex phoned me in early October to tell me she was “taking it in [to the dealership] to get it checked”. I thought, great, she’s being responsible and getting it ready for the end-of-lease formalities.

Then nothing – I didn’t hear from anyone about it for a few weeks.

When I asked her what was happening with the inspection, she claimed repeatedly that she was waiting for the dealership to get back to her. I called the dealership who responded only with, “we’re going to have to look into it”. Think that sounds fishy? So did I.

So I kept calling back and kept getting the same run-around until, in early November, the dealership finally notified me that the car had “left the lot”.

“What do you mean by that?”, I asked. See, I had assumed that, as the lease-owner, I would be required to sign something, inspect the car, or something before that decision could be made. I assumed that I had to be involved in the process – that it couldn’t all take place without my knowledge or involvement, behind my back, in secrecy. After all, as part of the agreement I had the option to purchase the car at the end of the lease. If I chose not to, I would be responsible for fixing any wear and tear on the vehicle before returning it to them. I think this is pretty standard as far as lease agreements go. As part of it, Honda does an assessment of the cost to fix it (which is of course an exorbitant sum), but as long as I fix every ding they mention, I’m not bound to pay anything that they estimate. That, at least, was the legal contract between us.

However, the people at Pickering Honda claimed repeatedly and unapologetically that the lease-owner doesn’t have to be present for any of the end-of-lease formalities, that this was all standard operating policy, that they’d done nothing wrong, I would have to take it up with my ex-wife, that I owed them $4,000 in damages, and when can they expect payment?

The car had been returned to the dealership months before the lease expired and the damage report, to which I had apparently agreed (I didn’t even know it existed until late November), was quite clear about the sum that I purportedly owed. Upon seeing the damage report much later, and aside from everything else that’s wrong with this situation, I don’t think that an inch-wide ding in the hood (plus a few other minor ones—smaller and didn’t break the paint), a chip in the windshield, and “incorrectly-sized tires”, should amount to $4,000.

But what do I know? Not like I ever got to see the car or anything.

To add insult to injury, I was still making payments on the lease at this point. Yet, literally, November was the first I’d heard of any of this. I mean, I wasn’t expecting the ex to be entirely forthright about the condition of the car, etc., but I certainly didn’t think that Pickering Honda would entirely exclude me from any decisions surrounding the car and the contract I had signed (and that my parents co-signed). The ex was nowhere on the contract, not as a wife, not as a relative, not even as a driver. Her name simply doesn’t appear on any of the paperwork.

In other words, from their perspective, a complete stranger walked in off the street into the Pickering Honda dealership, handed them my car and, as I later discovered, received a $1,000 incentive (they say it was payment) for returning the automobile early.

Naturally I inquired as to how they thought that this was IN ANY WAY acceptable, and they said it was standard procedure. Shit you not – they claim that apparently you can break into someone’s house, steal the keys to their car and, if they happen to be leasing that car, Pickering Honda will not only accept it from you and end the lease, but also send you on your way with a cool grand to spend as you see fit. Heck, if you’re a pissed-off teenager who wants to get back at their parents, according to Honda you’re more than welcome to follow this route. Honda will not make (and most certainly did not make), any effort to contact the people who actually sign the lease to see, you know, if this is okay or not, and this, they claim, is the way they’ve always done business.

Plus, they said, they didn’t have the correct contact information for me. That’s the absolute height of bullshit. Not only had I called them and updated their systems twice well before this all took place, but they had my full name on the lease agreement, an email address that hasn’t changed, as well as my parents’ names, address, and telephone number which have all remained the same the whole time. Plus, I got regular mailings to my current address from Honda Canada reminding me that my lease would soon be expiring and, if somehow they still couldn’t figure it out, they could’ve taken the opportunity to get my contact information from my ex-wife who had it all and was sitting right there in front of them. And besides, why would they think it was okay to just break a legally binding contract at the behest of some random stranger just because they couldn’t get a hold of me?

Their excuse: “She’d signed a letter stating that you two had been married”.

My response: “Yeah, we had been married. So what? It’s MY name on the lease, I paid the lease payments, I paid the insurance, I got all the speeding tickets.”

I did some careful investigative work to collect all the documents (oh yeah, I got proof coming out the yin-yang), some of which show that my ex was clearly lying (the fraud), signing her maiden name on some forms, her married name on other forms, and all the time lying to me about it. Later these turned into justifications and excuses. The vehicle inspection happened in her own driveway and not at the dealership as she’d claimed (“But I was going through an emotional time”, she claims). In fact, by the first of October, by the dealership’s own admission, the car had already been marked as “abandoned” and taken off their lot. My license plates were never removed (the theft) and to this day no one can tell me either the location of the car, the plates, or what happened to them once they left the dealership.

By some minor miracle, however, Honda Finance suddenly discovered mine and my parents’ contact information and promptly called us to start collecting on the $4,000 in damages that they claimed was outstanding on the car. Amazing, huh?

When I started to confront my ex with words like “fraud” (not saying she did it, just mentioning it), she suddenly jumped to attention and sided with me against the “assholes” at the dealership that were trying to “make [her] look bad”. They, in turn, tried to deflect as much blame as possible on her. I hate having my intelligence insulted in such an obvious way but at the same time I figured it would be more productive to try to resolve the situation rather than trying to exact any revenge or launch any lawsuits.

Currently the dealership is completely absolving itself of any responsibility in the matter, referring me instead to Honda Finance and pointing the finger at my ex as the culprit who misled them. I can believe a portion of that. My ex is pointing the finger at Honda who, she claims, was desperate to get her to buy a new car and so were encouraging her to take these actions. I can believe a portion of that.

Anyway, my last phone call to Honda Finance was months ago in which they say they’d “look into it”, and that’s where I am now – no car and “owing” four grand while my ex drives around in a brand new Honda sponsored by the people who helped her to perpetrate this.

The Final Humiliation

To be honest, during this period I haven’t been thinking about paying back any taxes to the government. For the past three months I’ve been searching anxiously for some sort of income, working hard on Toronto City Life, and trying to save my pennies so that I can pay my rent, bills, etc. I’ve been living on a shoe-string budget with a mostly bare refrigerator, home cooked-meals, and basically no extra expenditures outside of absolute necessities. Currently, Ollie is eating better than me.

The government, it seems, decided I’m living too grand a lifestyle and, based on my history of tax evasion and my overall wealth, I guess, decided to seize what little I had left.

I went to the bank yesterday to grab $20 so that I could go visit my sis – I’d promised I would babysit her kids for the evening while she and her husband had a night out. The bank machine spat out my card and told me to contact my nearest branch. Uh-oh, I thought, I guess I’ve hit the absolute overdraft limit earlier than I thought.

I’d been living off credit for years, after all deductions earning just enough to keep it all tenuously afloat until the next paycheque. The last time I checked, my personal line of credit sat at -$10,986 with $14 available in credit, my credit card was at -$5,962 with $38 available in credit, and my chequing account was at -$1,720 with $280 available in credit. All in all, I had lots owing and $332 available in credit, out of which $250 was earmarked for bills (cell phone, electricity, internet, repayments), leaving me with $82 to live off for the foreseeable future (until I found some source of income and received my first cheque). It was going to be tight but I was ready for the challenge. And I’m lucky to have a very supportive family so a couple of extra weeks living with uncertainty wasn’t a terrible prospect.

I made myself a solemn vow that if and when I got to this point in my finances I would take any job, serving coffee, manual labour, whatever. And that may still end up very much being the case. The dream of blogging full-time was always there but I’ve also been keenly aware that I must be pragmatic.

However, when the teller at my bank told me that my chequing account had been seized and locked by Canada Revenue, I was completely floored. I mean, not only had I been paying a ridiculous sum to the government prior to this but I’ve literally had $0 in income for over three months now. And, just like when they started to garnish my wages, this was done with no warning, discussion, or any attempt to even contact me. I once again searched furiously through my call records to see if I’d missed any phone calls, went through months of email, and went through the stack of mail sitting on my dining room table. Nada.

Without warning, the federal government simply swooped in and took everything, not even having the common courtesy to say thanks or to leave me a dollar to buy a loaf of bread. Literally.

And, just as en extra kick to the balls, they decided to do this all on a Friday night so I’d have no recourse for the entire weekend. The fact that the agency’s voicemail box is permanently full doesn’t fill me with an awful lot of confidence, neither does my experience dealing with them in the past. By this I mean just being able to speak to someone in person (let alone actually resolving anything).

And at this point they’ve managed to set into motion a series of events that could very possibly result in me actually becoming homeless, and will certainly prevent me from finding any legal employment. I wish I was kidding.

You see, Fido, my cell phone provider, does not accept cash – Canadian legal tender — as payment, in person or otherwise. Company policy; you can look it up. So I’d be forced to spend extra money I already don’t have on a cashier’s cheque to pay them since a) I no longer have any cash in my account b) my account is locked so that I couldn’t use it to make payments anyways c) if I were actually able to make deposits, they’d probably be seized right away. Fido has cut me off a number of times before for not paying my bill within 48 hours (twice they did this without even issuing a bill!), so chances are pretty good I won’t have a phone by the end of this coming week. My internet service provider seems more reasonable, but I deferred paying them last month in order to buy food, so that may not end well either. And the people who host Toronto City Life and all my email addresses charge my credit card monthly, and I have no way to replenish my card (or PayPal account, etc.), without the use of my chequing account. So I may very well be without a blog, email, or an internet connection. My electricity may stay on a bit longer; I’ve honestly never thought to look into this. And to be honest, I can’t even believe that I’m being forced to.

So interviewing for jobs, or trying to get in touch with prospective clients, well, that’s going to get much more difficult pretty soon.

And then there’s the problem of receiving payment — any remote or contract work is totally out of the question — I need a bank account to deposit or access the funds. In fact, most employers pay through electronic deposit these days so, in effect, the government is directly preventing me from being able to work most legal jobs, in my own field or otherwise.

—

I really feel like I’ve been fucked seven ways from Sunday by all these people. Every single thing I’ve stated here has documentation behind it: bills, stubs, receipts, photocopies of original documents, etc. I’ve had a hand to play in creating some of this, it’s true, but I don’t deserve to be pushed into the corner like this. So let me be entirely clear about what’s going to happen next: motherfuckers better know, gloves are coming off.

What choices have they left me?

Thanks for your time, dear reader. I’ll try to keep you posted on the situation as best as I can.

Your friend,
Patrick Bay