iscover Director ordered to pay $500k in PAYGW penalties
TaxA director was ordered to pay a summary judgment of over $500,000 for a failure to pay tax liabilities without sufficient reason.
Zygmund Wolski, director of Mint Investments between 1995 and 2018, was ordered by the District Court of Western Australia to pay the Commonwealth of Australia director penalties of $502,443.91 after he failed to pay pay as you go withholding (PAYGW) provision payments by the relevant due dates.
Wolski told the court that, despite being a director at Mint Investments, he mostly worked in the “field” of the mining industry from 2010 to 2012 and was thus not involved in the day-to-day running of the company's office.
In light of the “field” work, District Court Judge Mark Ritter said: “Although there may have been times that the defendant was focused on things other than the management of the company's affairs, this does not provide a good reason showing why the defendant was unable to participate in the management of the company.”
Wolski submitted that he relied on an external bookkeeper to deal with the company’s tax affairs. In September 2011, Wolski told the court that upon reviewing the company's accounts, he was “overwhelmed with the total amount outstanding”.
Following this discovery, which Wolski called “deficiencies”, he appointed an external accounting firm, Crowe Horwath, to take over the books and investigate the company’s affairs.
Shortly after discovering the extent of the company’s liabilities, Wolski put Mint Investments under voluntary administration on 12 September 2012.
In his 16 June 2026 decision on Wolski’s appeal application, the judge heard that Wolski pleaded he “took all reasonable steps to ensure the company met their obligations” and “there were no reasonable steps that could have been taken to ensure the company complied with its taxation obligations”.
The judge found that up until the decision to appoint administrators, the defendant did not take reasonable steps to repay the debt, but between February 2011 and August 2012, merely “gathered information”.
“The defendant needed to do more than merely try to gather information to possibly invoke the statutory defence,” the judge said in his decision.
The judge called Wolski’s submission that he did not have access to the company’s books or records to check that all the taxation obligations were met insufficient to establish “reasonable steps”.
Instead, the judge determined that Wolski was merely “ignorant of the affairs of a company and its failure to meet its taxation obligations”.
“It remained the obligation of the defendant to take steps, other than waiting for the external bookkeeper, to ascertain the financial position of the company and taxation obligations,” the judge said.
In his appeal, Wolski attempted to claim that the taxation legislation which the Deputy Commissioner of Taxation (DCT) relied on in its summary judgment was invalid.
In his decision, the judge determined that this submission does not “provide any arguable defence” to DCT seeking payment of PAYGW liabilities.
The case citation: DEPUTY COMMISSIONER OF TAXATION -vWOLSKI [2026] WADC 44.
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Carlos Tse
Carlos Tse is a graduate journalist writing for Accountants Daily, HR Leader, Lawyers Weekly.