A great new year’s resolution for Directors of a Canadian private corporations is to brush up on GST/HST and income tax compliance! The reason is that where a corporation incurs a tax debt for GST, HST or income tax source withholdings, the directors of those corporations can be held personally liable. For GST/HST purposes, this potential liability encompasses virtually all the net tax obligations of the corporation!
A recent case demonstrates the high standard directors need to uphold, even when imposed with incredibly difficult situations in which the government has played a hand.