An Auckland kitchen installer has been jailed for more than two years after nearly a decade of tax fraud amounting to more than half a million – while his wife avoided prison so their high-needs kids were not left without a parent.
Judge Alofivae found Faalili Vaa and his wife, Belinda Heilupe Vaa, equally culpable, but sentenced him to 26 months' imprisonment and her to 12 months' home detention, according to an Inland Revenue media release this afternoon.
The judge said the couple's autistic children were Belinda Vaa's "saving grace".
Both faced representative charges of evading income tax and GST, and of using a document to dishonestly obtain income tax advantages and a Small Business Cashflow Scheme loan, between 2015 and 2024.
Inland Revenue said the pair shared all the profits of their kitchen installation business and knew the GST and income tax returns filed for it were wrong, with sales under-stated and expenses inflated.
Once the department began reviewing their tax affairs in 2018, the couple stopped filing GST and income tax returns altogether.
In total, the evasion and fraud came to $554,998.68 over nine years.
'Strictly humanitarian grounds'
Judge Alofivae set a starting point of 44 months' imprisonment for each of them, before allowing discounts for guilty pleas, remorse and the couple's home circumstances with their autistic children. That brought both sentences down to 26 months.
She then cut Belinda Vaa's sentence to 24 months and converted it to 12 months' home detention.
Inland Revenue said the judge made that call "strictly on humanitarian grounds", because the effect of having both parents in prison "would just be too great" on the couple's high-needs children.
Judge Alofivae was also concerned that Faalili Vaa was still working in a self-employed capacity, despite the charges, Inland Revenue said.
She described the nine years of offending as "absolutely unacceptable" and said it appeared he had caused his wife to become involved.
The judge said ignorance was not a defence, and Inland Revenue said a pre-sentencing report left her unconvinced he'd grasped the full gravity of what he had done.
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