Case Study
Blast From the Past
A man who had closed his business in 1998 was surprised to receive a tax bill from the Ministry of Finance nine years later – for more than $10,000 in unpaid sales taxes plus interest. He was told the bill was based on three separate tax assessments and notice of these had been mailed to him in 1997 and 1998 – however, he had never received them and the Ministry was unable to provide him with copies. The man filed a notice of objection with the Ministry, but it was rejected because an objection has to be filed within 180 days of the original assessment. The Ministry then placed liens on the man’s car and home and garnished his wages.
When he complained to the Ombudsman, the man noted the Ministry had never explained how it arrived at its calculations, or why he had not received the 1997 bill. After 11 months of back-and-forth discussions with an Ombudsman investigator, Ministry staff acknowledged that the man had notified them of a change of address but they had failed to update their records, resulting in correspondence from 1998 being returned as undeliverable.
As a result, in February 2009, the Minister of Finance approved a “remission” in the man’s favour of $7,577, representing interest that had accrued between the time the original tax assessments were issued and when he actually received notice of them, as well as the time it took for the Ministry to finally establish how it had calculated the amount of tax owed. He received his cheque in April 2009.