http://decision.tcc-cci.gc.ca/tcc-cci/decisions/en/item/72578/index.do 
Antifaiff v. The Queen (July 17, 2014 – 2014 TCC 216) was an appeal from a director’s liability assessment under the Excise Tax Act. Although the appellant raised numerous issues, the case was essentially straight forward:
[2] The issues in this appeal are as follows:
i) whether the Minister properly applied certain credits to amounts owing by FIS;
ii) whether the Minister correctly calculated the late-filing penalties and failure to remit penalties owing by FIS under the Act;
iii) whether FIS was entitled to additional input tax credits (ITCs) in respect of its reporting periods ending between October 1, 1998 and September 30, 2000;
iv) whether the appellant acted with due diligence to prevent the failures by FIS to remit the net tax owing; and
v) whether the appellant was entitled to any relief because of the delay by the Minister in assessing him for the GST liability of FIS.
Facts
[3] FIS was incorporated in Saskatchewan on May 20, 1993. It operated a computer consulting business. At all times, the appellant was the sole shareholder and director.
[4] FIS was struck off the Saskatchewan corporate register on October 31, 1997, apparently for failing to file its annual returns. However, it continued to carry on business until late 2000.
[5] The evidence showed that FIS was regularly late in filing its GST returns, and did not remit any net tax with any of its GST returns.
The court found that, on the evidence, FIS had received all of the credits to which it was entitled and there was no evidence that the ordering of application of the credits was inappropriate. The court also rejected the appellant’s calculation of penalties since he did not include compound interest in his calculations. The court rejected the argument that additional input tax credits should have been applied since there was no evidence to justify such additional credits.
The due diligence defence was equally unsuccessful:
[37] In my view, the appellant has not shown that he took sufficient specific actions to prevent the failures by FIS to remit GST collected from its customers. The evidence shows that the failures to remit by FIS which led to the assessment against the appellant occurred repeatedly over a period of approximately 4 years. It also appears that FIS was often in default of its obligation to file timely GST returns from 1994 on, and that no GST returns for its reporting periods ending from September 30, 1998 to September 30, 2000 were filed until September 2005.
[38] It is not clear from the appellant’s testimony what particular circumstances led to the failure by FIS to file returns and remit GST as required by the Act, nor is it clear what steps he took, if any, beyond reducing his salary, to prevent the failures to remit. The appellant’s testimony relating to the salary reductions is insufficient in itself to demonstrate that he exercised due diligence since it was not shown that any savings from the salary reductions were directed to paying remittances of GST. Overall, there was no indication of any coherent plan to ensure that GST remittances were made as required. In fact, for the years during which the appellant took less salary, (as well as all previous periods) FIS did not remit any amounts of GST at all. All reductions to the net tax payable by FIS were made by applying refunds of net tax arising in other reporting periods.
Finally the court rejected the appellant’s claim for relief because the reassessments were made some 7 years after FIS ceased business operations:
[42] In the absence of any evidence that the appellant ever resigned, was removed or had become disqualified as a director, it has not been shown that the 2 year limit for a director’s liability assessment ever began to run.
[43] In light of the fact that FIS was struck from the company register, it might be argued that the corporation ceased to exist at that point and that the appellant ceased to be a director. However, according to the decision of the Saskatchewan Court of Queens Bench in R. v. Rasmussen and Saskatoon Salvage Co., (1985) Ltd., 130 Sask. R. 308, a corporation which is struck from the register in Saskatchewan is not thereby dissolved and may continue to carry on business. The only consequence of being struck is that the corporation is no longer capable of commencing or maintaining an action in respect of a contract made in Saskatchewan. In this case there is no basis for holding that FIS has ever been dissolved.
[44] I therefore find that the director’s liability assessment in issue was not made outside the time limit in subsection 323(5).
As a result the appeal was dismissed.