What happens when you can't pay your tax bills?
You have aspirations to grow your business quickly. Soon, the bills are mounting and you’re monitoring your chequing account multiple times per day. Not all the bills can get paid each month, and there’s definitely no cash for unexpected expenses. The tax bills can’t take priority over the people you owe money to, so those start mounting up. You've talked to the that awful lady from the collections department at the CRA enough and start screening her calls.
You ignore the issue for months, and then you get notice that your bank accounts have been garnished by the CRA or another collections agency. You get a call from a different person with the CRA, who is now your very own account manager. This person is now the only one you deal with at the CRA, and she is much nicer than the collections agent. She seems to actually want to help you get your business back on track.
You work out a payment schedule with her and everything looks manageable. Until sales don’t improve, and the 6-month payment schedule turns out to be impossible to meet. You survive for a few more months, until one day, you go to fuel up your truck, and find out your bank accounts have been frozen.