Jarvis Principles Under Siege In Piersanti v The Queen

The recent Piersanti v The Queen¹ decision offers an important lesson for both tax professionals and criminal defense counsel.  Taxpayers who do not challenge the admissibility of evidence in a criminal tax evasion trial risk having that evidence used against them in subsequent Tax Court of Canada ("TCC") proceedings.   Piersanti is a step back from the pre-Jarvis² decision of O'Neill Motors v Canada,³ in which the TCC vacated reassessments that were based on unconstitutionally obtained documents that had been excluded from evidence at a criminal trial.

In Piersanti, the taxpayer was unsuccessful in having incriminating documents excluded from evidence before the TCC. The documents had been obtained by the CRA during a criminal investigation under the Excise Tax Act (Canada) ("ETA"), in a manner that would have arguably rendered them inadmissible in a criminal tax evasion trial. The TCC hearing arose from reassessments issued under the Income Tax Act (Canada) ("IT