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Yahoo
27-06-2025
- Yahoo
How long to pay off $800K in illegal cigarette fines? 32,000 months, a judge calculates
Nova Scotia provincial court Judge Alain Bégin put a fine point on the absurdity of the situation with some quick math: it will take 32,000 months for the 68-year-old man he was sentencing on contraband cigarette charges to pay off the massive fines that, by law, had to be imposed. On Wednesday, David Barrie confirmed he was pleading guilty to two counts related to possessing unstamped tobacco, charges that stemmed from 650,000 illegal cigarettes discovered by RCMP in a van the man was driving two years ago near Truro, N.S. The violations were under the federal Excise Act and provincial Revenue Act, which prescribe formulas to determine the minimum fine amount, based on the number of cigarettes seized and the tax evaded. In Barrie's case, the calculation amounts to a whopping $886,296.80, an astronomical amount for a man the court was told is disabled, unemployed and lives on an Old Age Security pension. "What's your intention with regards to minimum payment?" Bégin asked him in a Truro courtroom. "Two hundred bucks a month? A hundred bucks a month? What are you gonna do? You pay $50 a month towards your $800,000 bill?" "He was hoping for maybe 25," Jim O'Neil, Barrie's lawyer, replied. "All right, $25 a month on your $800,000 bill," concluded Bégin, who out of curiosity did a quick calculation. "Yeah, 32,000 months to pay off your fine." In an interview, O'Neil said the minimum fines for illegal tobacco charges are set out in federal and provincial legislation, and judges have no discretion. It's an issue, he said, that has long bothered him when it comes to clients who are too poor to pay. In one case involving a single mother, O'Neil said, he sought to challenge the fine based on her poverty, but after researching the case law realized the argument would not succeed in charges involving contraband tobacco. When faced with such situations, he said, the only thing judges can do is "modify the impact" on the offender by ordering them to pay small monthly amounts, with no illusions the total fine will ever be paid off. "An awful lot of people who are involved in contraband tobacco are themselves addicted to tobacco or they're poor," O'Neil said. "For some reason, governments have singled out this particular offence for these huge fines and it's not proportionate to any other wrongdoings we may do as citizens." Revenue from tobacco taxes has dropped significantly in Nova Scotia in recent years. Smoking rates have declined, but a provincial cabinet minister acknowledged this spring that contraband sales may also be eating into the government's bottom line. Provincial tobacco enforcement officers seized a record number of illegal cigarettes last year, although the statistics don't include seizures by police forces. Barrie was arrested on May 27, 2023, after police pulled over a Ford Econoline van at the interchange of highways 102 and 104 outside of Truro, according to an RCMP police release at the time. Officers obtained a search warrant and found the unstamped cigarettes. O'Neil told the court Wednesday that Barrie was only a courier for someone else. "That's even worse. He wasn't going to get the benefit" from the sale of the cigarettes, O'Neil said. "Or the most foolish part, perhaps," Bégin replied. "Worse or most foolish, taking all the risk, going to get the penalty, and nothing to show for it." MORE TOP STORIES
Hans India
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Hans India
Bhu Bharati will strengthen revenue system: Ponnam
Karimnagar: The Bhu Bharati Act will solve all issues pertaining to the land disputes and farmers will not have to go around of Revenu offices to rectify land records, said BC Welfare Minister Ponnam Prabhakar here on Tuesday. The Minister speaking the Bhu Bharati awareness seminars organised at Saidapur and Chigurumamidi in the district on Tuesday. He said Bhu Bharati Act will implement the new RoR Act in a strict and transparent manner and the rural revenue system will be strengthened. He added that the farmers' grievances and anger due to the land disputes brought about by the Dharani have gone as far as attacking the tahsildars. He said that due to the Dharani system, the farmer was not in a position to sell his land himself. The previous government portrayed the officials as thieves and transferred hundreds of acres of land in their names overnight. Prabhakar said that the names of those who sold their lands less than 30 years ago and left have come under the Dharani, and due to this, the real farmers are facing difficulties. Bhu Bharati has brought the new Revenue Act into effect with the intention of solving all these problems. The problems will be solved through this Act from June 2. He said that if anyone is involved in land grabbing, the public should bring it to their attention and those lands will be used again for public needs. District Collector Pamela Satpathy said that the Bhu Bharati Act has decentralised powers and the responsibility and accountability of officials have increased. The system of village administration powers will be strengthened. In the last six months, the government has resolved more than 9,000 land issue applications in the district by giving powers to the tahsildars and RDOs. Additional Collector Praful Desai, RTOs Maheshwar and Ramesh Babu, Cooperative Society Chairman Kotha Tirupati Reddy, AMC Chairman Sudhakar, DCO Ramanujacharya, DAO Bhagyalakshmi, Tahsildars Ramesh and Manjula and MPDO Yadagiri participated in the programme.
India Today
28-04-2025
- India Today
Over dozen illegal madrassas in UP's Shravasti closed in anti-encroachment drive
In a crackdown against unauthorised madrassas in Uttar Pradesh's Shravasti, authorities have closed down more than a dozen such institutions in two days after they were not able to produce valid documents, officials said. A total of seven madrassas were shut down in Sharavasti on madrassas were operating near the India-Nepal border. Notably, one of the madrassas that came under the purview of the authorities' action had been operating in Bangai Bazaar since 1974. Disciples used to study Arabic and Urdu languages at this to official data, the authorities carried out the special operation in a radius of 15 kms, taking action against 119 illegal encroachments amid a heavy police presence. "There are a total of 297 madrassas in Shravasti district and 192 of these are unrecognised. On Saturday, 10 madrassas were closed within a 15-km-radius of the India-Nepal border. Many irregularities were found in them," news agency PTI quoted District Minority Welfare Officer Devendra Ram as saying."Most of these were being operated secretly, some were being run illegally in rented houses or homes and some in semi-constructed buildings," he have initiated action against unrecognised and illegal madrassas on the instructions of District Magistrate Ajay Kumar has been taken under Section 67 of the Revenue Act to free government land, an official PTI inputs
The Print
27-04-2025
- Politics
- The Print
Seven unrecognised madrassas closed in UP's Shravasti
During these two days, government land within a 15-km radius of the India-Nepal border was freed by clearing 119 illegal encroachments as part of a special campaign, the officials said. With this, 17 madrassas have been closed in two days. Shravasti (UP), Apr 27 (PTI) Authorities here closed seven madrassas on Sunday due to non-submission of documents for their recognition, officials said. Three madrassas in Bhinga tehsil and four in Jamunaha tehsil were closed as they did not submit any valid documents for their recognition, the district administration said in a statement. 'There are a total of 297 madrassas in Shravasti district and 192 of these are unrecognised. On Saturday, 10 madrassas were closed within the 15 km-radius of the India-Nepal border. Many irregularities were found in them. 'Most of these were being operated secretly, some were being run illegally in rented houses or homes and some in semi-constructed buildings,' District Minority Welfare Officer Devendra Ram told PTI. According to the statement, the action is being taken against illegal and unrecognised madrassas on the instructions of District Magistrate Ajay Kumar Dwivedi. Action has been taken under Section 67 of the Revenue Act to free government land falling within the 15-km radius of the India-Nepal border from encroachments like illegal concrete houses, among other things, the statement said. PTI COR NAV DIV DIV This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
‘There will be blood': JPMorgan raises recession risk to 60% as global stock market sell off continues
Bank economists estimate Trump's tariff increase would cost U.S. households $700 billion, equivalent to the largest de facto tax hike levied since LBJ's Revenue Act of 1968 financed his war in Vietnam. President Donald Trump's package of tariffs to be levied starting next week could plunge not just the United States into recession but the entire world along with it. That's the simple conclusion reached by the top economic minds at JPMorgan. In a research report published on Thursday titled 'There will be Blood', the Wall Street investment bank argued other global markets would not be resilient enough to escape the gravitational forces of a shrinking U.S. economy weighted down by tariffs. Revising its 2025 forecasts for the second time in five weeks, JPMorgan said it was caught off guard by the Trump administration's 'extreme' agenda symbolized by the raft of hefty import duties announced during Trump's so-called 'Liberation Day.' As a result of the White House's attempt to convert its trade deficit into a problem for America's trading partners, JPMorgan has now ratcheted up the probability of a global recession to 60% from 40% previously. Yet far from making America wealthy again as Trump has promised, JPMorgan calculates taht the tariffs will cost U.S. consumers roughly $700 billion—a de facto tax hike nearly as painful relative to the size of the economy as Lyndon B. Johnson's Revenue Act passed to finance America's war in Vietnam. 'If sustained, this year's ~22%-point tariff increase would be the largest U.S. tax hike since 1968,' the bank said, estimating its impact at 2.4% of domestic GDP. The latest actions lift the average tariff rate higher than even those seen during the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, an act that many economists argue played a key role in exacerbating the Great Depression. 'A strong case can be made that the latest tariffs are more damaging given that the share of imports and broader globalization are considerably larger now than in the 1930s,' JPMorgan continued. The Trump administration has argued a healthy manufacturing base is important to national security, worth the short-term pain to claw back heavy industry that was hollowed out over many years and moved offshore. And indeed, the pandemic did reveal globalization had its flaws, as the lack of certain $1 commodity semiconductors made in Taiwan prevented the manufacture of a $40,000 passenger car stateside. However, due to the dimensions and arbitrary nature of the tariffs—determined not through reciprocal tariff rates but trade imbalances—their imposition risks sparking a retaliatory trade war where other countries erect their own protectionist walls in a tit-for-tat escalation. Here JPMorgan analysts admit it becomes almost impossible to predict the outcome given the many variables at play. Business sentiment and supply chain disruption could either mitigate or exacerbate the effects of the tariffs. As a result, on Thursday the markets suffered their worst day since the COVID outbreak five years ago, with $3 trillion worth of value wiped off U.S. equities. A key factor could be upcoming negotiations, in which the Trump administration is expected to seek concessions from partners that could reduce the trade deficit in exchange for the U.S. lowering its tariff rates. There are some fundamental economic realities that most likely will not change no matter what tariff is charged. Take the semiconductor industry as an example. Fabricating chips is a capital-intensive business that requires specialized knowledge, critical mass and economies of scale. Taiwan didn't simply become the world's foundry—it aggressively invested in this specialization. Its grip on third-party chip production makes it a critical partner for the U.S. and acts as a strategic deterrent against Chinese aggression. By comparison, U.S. chip companies like AMD that once made their own chips hived off this side of their operations to focus on the more lucrative and less risky design and distribution. So called 'fab-less' peers like Nvidia outsourced their production to foreign chip fabs from the very beginning. JPMorgan raises this issue as a potential stumbling block and source of friction during negotiations, limiting the room for manoever and raising the risk of a protracted trade war. 'Importantly, existing bilateral trade imbalances are linked to comparative advantages that promote efficiencies and are generally independent of barriers to trade,' it said. This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
