There are two reasons for why sales and employment taxes should be the top priority for businesses to pay. First, these taxes have some of the highest penalties when you add them altogether — failure to file on time, failure to pay on time, failure to make required deposits, etc. Second is that these are known as "collected taxes" which means the business is collecting the tax that the consumer or employee owes the government and holds those funds in trust for the government until paid over to the tax agency. Because other people's money is involved, the tax agencies take a sterner line on collecting it and bankruptcy law does not allow the collected portion of the liability (the tax collected from customers or employees) to be eligible for discharge. In other words, bankruptcy won't be a way to get rid of the collected tax portion of what he owes like it would be for other debts from the business. Too many businesses don't know that until it's too late and they owe the government payroll and sales taxes that they cannot pay. The businesses focus first on paying employees their net pay, paying vendors, paying rent, etc because not paying those will quickly close up the business. They put off the tax problems because that's not as immediate and they believe the business will pick up enough soon to allow them to pay it. While some optimism is needed to run a business, a business owner needs to be able to see when the business is struggling and there's not much change to change that. As the old Kenny Rogers classic song "The Gambler" goes "you need to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and when to run".
