Tax evader mum’s reparation will take 161 years to pay off

It will take at least 160 years for a jailed mother-of-six to pay reparations ordered for $420,000 of tax evasion.

Court documents show Elizabeth Juilian Tangikau had no known prior convictions and claimed she was “incompetent” with tax returns.

She did nothing in almost two years to repay any money, leaving a judge saying there was no choice but to jail her.

Auckland District Court sentencing notes showed Tangikau ran on-site catering services for NZ Post at the LJ Cafe in Highbrook in the eastern suburbs.

“You registered for GST and as an employer for PAYE in 2013 but you never, ever got any accounting advice as far as I am aware,” Judge Kate Davenport KC said.

For GST returns between July 2014 and May 2018, Tangikau returned losses — and received rebates amounting to $153,000.

“You misappropriated at least $245,000 of PAYE which is money that you pay to the Government on behalf of your staff,” the judge added.

“Now, you say that you did this because you really were unable to work out yourself what you should pay, and you were somewhat incompetent with your returns,” Judge Davenport said.

“It is unfortunate that despite the Commissioner of Inland Revenue reaching out to you on a number of occasions, including one where they came around to see you, you took no steps to remedy the concerns,” the judge added.

“You continued on with your fraudulent non-reporting or discounted reporting of what you earnt.

“So, the person that has benefited from this has been you and your family and you have benefited to the sum of an agreed figure of $420,000.”

Tangikau’s lawyer has been approached for comment. It’s not immediately clear if the mother-of-six appealed her conviction or sentence.

“The difficulty in sentencing you, Ms Tangikau, is that you have taken no steps to do anything about this situation, even though you were charged with these charges in May 2022,” Judge Davenport said.

Tangikau provided a letter expressing remorse.

“You say that these charges were occasioned by your ignorance of what you had to do and your inability to understand how to file tax returns or PAYE or GST returns because of your lack of knowledge. However, I believe that this is post-circumstance justification.”

The judge added: “You put your staff at risk because you did not pay the PAYE on their returns and the charge that you face is that you did this knowingly.”

The offending was not sophisticated, maybe not even planned, but it continued for six years with 75 false returns, Judge Davenport added.

Tangikau received discounts for previous good character, her guilty plea, and for remorse.

That still left her with two years and three months in prison.

She was ordered to repay $420,000 at $50 a week.

At that rate, the debt will be repaid in about November — in the year 2185.

The summary of facts said Tangikau showed very poor compliance with tax obligations and only intermittently responded to communications from IRD.

In December 2015, a community compliance officer visited, and Tangikau said she’d file outstanding returns.

The first tax evasion charge related to understating self-employed income in the financial years from 2015 to 2020.

Tangikau had an income tax shortfall of at least $126,194.37.

The second tax evasion charge related to GST returns from 2014 to 2020.

These returns under-reported sales and over-reported expenditure, so Tangikau claimed to have costs much higher than expenses she actually incurred.

Tangikau faced a third charge which was of misappropriating payroll tax.

She did this at least 43 times between approximately April 2015 and December 2019.