Man ‘moves’ to Ottawa in canoe
RETIRED TEACHER MAKES A POINT TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF TAX DEDUCTION
When John Konecny was called “near treasonous” in court, he knew it was time to test the government.
He packed his belongings and moved from Whitby, Ont., to Ottawa — in a canoe — and had the government deduct his expenses.
“This was 35 years of frustration with the Canada Revenue Agency," the recently-retired, 55-year-old teacher said in a phone interview.
“I was insulted … and my friends know my Monty Python sense of humour.”
The journey that led Konecny to that unforgettable day in court back in 2014 had started decades earlier.
In 1989, he was a student who lived in Ottawa, but studied two hours away in Kingston, Ont., at Queen’s University. Each time he moved from place to place, he deducted his moving expenses as a student.
Soon after graduating, he started full-time work as an English teacher in Scarborough, Ont., east of Toronto’s core, but had already gained work as a supply teacher in Ottawa. Then, Konecny had an epiphany.
“What I had been doing as a student, I could now do as a grownup,” he said.
The CRA allows Canadians to deduct eligible expenses from their taxable income if they move at least 40 kilometres for work or school, allowing someone to not pay tax on the money they use to move. But the rules do not specify how long someone needs to live at a location to be considered as living there. Nor do they specify the mode of transportation someone needs to use to move.
So, as he moved from place to place — however short the trip — the adult Konecny made use of the same deductions.
But by 2014, the CRA had had enough of Konecny’s annual moves, with a judge calling his use of the tax benefit a “working vacation.” The judge denied his attempt to deduct $1,400 from one moving trip, and Konecny also had to pay the $3,000 court costs. What hurt most was a lawyer labelling his deductions as “near treasonous.”
“That put me over the top,” he said. “I was on Parliament Hill when the Queen signed the constitution … I take the tax system and the Constitution very to heart.”
When the judge poked fun at the distance between Konecny’s moves, and offered some lighthearted suggestions for further trips, Konecny decided to push things a step further.
“He said to me, ‘Sir, could you move on a bike,’ and I said, ‘Yes, my understanding is that you could,’” Konecny said.
And in 2016, despite being severely diabetic, he did.
“I was trying to make the point that ‘If you let me do something for 25 years, how can it be wrong when nothing has changed?’ ” he said.
In that same 2014 court appearance, he remembered one more question from the judge. “Mr. Konecny, could you move in a canoe?”
From the revenue agency’s perspective, it doesn’t matter how moves are made, but Konecny took the judge’s words as a challenge, and found himself paddling along Lake Ontario’s shorelines in a beaten, blue fibreglass canoe in 2018.
Lugging the canoe on his bike in a small trailer along with some groceries and a few bottles of wine, the sixday journey had him trek through five provincial parks and navigate the water using a modified weed wacker as a propeller.
When he had to venture into towns to re-stock, he hid his canoe behind park signs.
“I started optimistic and full of piss and vinegar, but by the night in Murphy’s Point (some 100 kilometres from Ottawa), I was too tired to make dinner or put up a tent,” he said, noting he was never in any danger during his travels. “I slept under a picnic table with a blanket and I had some regret there but knew there was only seven or eight hours ahead of me.”
But Konecny kept every receipt. He also changed his banking address and driver’s licence, and provided documents that outlined the location of his burial plot — all to show he had truly moved to Ottawa.
The CRA approved his $983 in deductions.
David J. Rotfleisch, a managing partner and owner of Toronto law firm, Rotfleisch & Samulovitch Professional Corporation, said that despite what critics say, Konecny’s use of “the most typical Canadian mode of transportation” was legitimate. “It would be outrageous for them to prohibit canoes,” he said in a phone interview. “This is a mainstream and reasonable provision in the Income Tax Act … it’s black-letter law, what he did is entirely proper and normal.”
Rotfleisch called working with CRA a “crapshoot,” noting that much of the decision to allow the deduction rides on the auditor filed to the case.
Dale Barrett, a managing partner at Barrett Tax Law, said he’s glad Konecny used the canoe, calling the move “ingenious.” Though he also thinks the government won’t change any wording in the act. “You can’t define everything. The Income Tax Act is wordy as it is, but you’ve got to have some general principles,” he said in a phone interview. “You can’t legislate every single word.”
Konecny said his cheapest move cost $44 and his most expensive was in the thousands, when he included his family. Two Men and A Truck, a moving firm in Toronto, estimates most of Konecny’s trips would’ve cost him $1,200 had he gone through the traditional route of hiring movers.
Konecny said he moved 71 times from September 1984 to June 2018. And he’s not done.
“My friends said, ‘Now that you’re retired, go get a day of supply work in Ottawa and take a snowmobile, skis, skates, sled dogs, the whole winter gamut,” he said, calling it “my Monty Python-esque response to the Queen.”