The former owner of Casa La Pizza in Beloeil, Haci Koskokan, will have to pay hefty fines totaling $173,875 and serve a one-year suspended prison sentence for a series of tax offenses.
The sentence, rendered on June 28 at the Saint-Hyacinthe courthouse, was announced Friday in a press release by Revenu Québec. Mr. Koskokan had pleaded guilty to five counts, while his company, operating under the name 9379-3792 Québec inc., similarly pleaded guilty to six counts.
The scheme, according to Revenu Québec, consisted of using several cash registers in the Casa La Pizza restaurant on Sir-Wilfrid-Laurier Boulevard in Beloeil, to produce invoices for customers. Only one of them, however, was linked to a sales recording module (SRM). “This allowed the company to evade significant amounts of taxes and duties,” indicates Revenu Québec.
Mr. Koskokan admitted having filed false tax returns, both for the Quebec sales tax (QST) and for the goods and services tax (GST). He also failed to pay the duties established by the tax law. The company 9379-3792 Quebec inc. is pinned for not having given a customer an invoice containing the mandatory information and produced by means of a sales recording module.
Revenu Québec estimates that the company managing Casa La Pizza filed nine false or misleading tax returns between July 2018 and September 2020. It did not remit QST and GST amounts estimated at $50,191.16 and $25,171.67, respectively. He is further accused of failing to pay $28,932 in taxes and failing to file a tax return of $251,582 in 2020.
Casa La Pizza no longer belongs to Mr. Koskokan, which has been impossible to trace. Reached by telephone, the establishment’s new owner for four months told The Press that he did not know Mr. Koskokan and had “changed a lot of things”, including the menus, since his acquisition.