Limited Liability?
Many individual taxpayers who invest in a closely held business, including one organized as a corporation, fail to appreciate there are circumstances in which they may be held personally liable by a state or local taxing authority for the sales tax collected or required to be collected by the business.
In other words, if certain criteria are satisfied, the limited liability protection that an individual shareholder would normally enjoy as a matter of state corporate law, and which they may have assumed – not unreasonably – would shield them from personal responsibility for any and all liabilities of the corporation, including taxes, will be of no avail even where the shareholder has respected the separate legal status of the corporation.[i]
Continue Reading Shareholder Beware: Personal Liability for N.Y. Sales Tax