Remember Ghis, formerly known as Ghislaine Lanctôt, that idiosyncratic, “personocratic” tax resister from Canada? (I reviewed her book Escape in Prison ).
Escape in Prison by Ghis
The book told the story of her two-month imprisonment on charges related to her tax refusal in Canada, and of the process that led her to take her stand. At the time of its publication, her case had still not been resolved (she was released from prison when the Judge decided that the charges she was facing would not warrant a longer imprisonment than she’d already served for refusal to cooperate with the court).
I’ve recently received an update from Ghis that includes the story of what happened next.
Ghis believes in a weird sort of mythology in which we people, with our names, are assigned fictional doppelgangers at birth by a world conspiracy of governments. These doppelgangers share our names, but in all capital letters, and have debts attached to them which our lower-case selves spend the rest of our days working off through taxpaying.
So, when Ghis returned to court, where the trial of GHISLAINE LANCTÔT was taking place, she reiterated her belief that the trial was not about her, but about her doppelganger. The judge was having none of it, so Ghis turned around and walked out. She (or SHE, anyway) was sentenced in absentia to a thousand-dollar fine, which she has no intention of paying. This was .
The upshot is that after not paying taxes for 15 years, Ghis has served a couple of months in prison, but hasn’t paid a cent. She’s pretty satisfied with that result.
