Livedoor Co. founder Takafumi Horie, free on bail while taking his guilty verdict over cooking company books to the Supreme Court, has been slapped with a fresh tax evasion charge worth ¥30 million, tax authority sources said Monday.
On his Internet blog site, Horie, 36, acknowledged that his income since 2005 was scrutinized by the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau and that he had paid less than he was supposed to.
But Horie denied intending to evade his taxes.
"I did not hide any of my income. I have already filed a revised tax report," he wrote.
Because Horie has corrected his report, the case is unlikely to develop any further, the sources said.
According to the sources, Horie, who is required to file tax reports because he is self-employed, failed to report ¥30 million in taxable income over two years in 2006 and 2007.
The tax bureau found that Horie's personal expenses, which should have been separated from his business expenses, had also been deducted from his taxable income.
On his tax report in 2005, however, Horie apparently made erroneous calculations and paid too much to the tax bureau, the sources said, and he will get a refund of some ¥1 million.
The Tokyo District Court sentenced Horie in March 2007 to 2 1/2 years in prison for falsifying Livedoor's financial reports for the business year through September 2004 so the company would appear to have made ¥5 billion in pretax profit, while in reality it made a ¥300 million loss.
The Tokyo High Court in July dismissed Horie's appeal and upheld the lower court ruling. Horie's appeal is now before the Supreme Court.
