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PST — directors' liability (car dealership)

My client was a director of a company that ran a car dealership. The company went out of business with unremitted Ontario Retail Sales Tax. The Ontario Ministry of Revenue wrote to him to propose assessing him as director for this PST liability.

I wrote a lengthy letter to the Ministry to explain that my client met the "due diligence" defence. He had always tried to have the company comply with its tax obligations, but while it was in interim receivership some of its PST remittances were not made, even though the receiver had prepared cash flow projections showing that these amounts would be paid. The receiver actually took over the company a few days after the planned receivership date, so that my client inadvertently still had control of the company on a due date when the receiver should have been handling remittances. I also showed that if the PST remittance had been made, that would have been a "fraudulent preference" of the Ministry over other creditors, as determined by the case law. I backed up my submissions with extensive documentary evidence. I then showed the Ministry that the Canada Revenue Agency had accepted the same arguments with respect to the GST.

The CRA agreed, and withdrew its proposal to assess my client.

Problem vanished!

(2008)