Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Take VAT! Time to expose tax cheats
Bosses who don’t pay their dues are hitting the Covid-19 fight
ONE day all of the billions being spent fighting the pandemic are going to have to be repaid, and it will be all of us as taxpayers who foot the bill.
So now seems like a good time to start shaming the business cheats who fiddle the system to line their own pockets.
Sadly, there are loads of them, with tax offences being the most common reason for someone ne being banned from being a director.
Insolvency Service figures s for the last financial year show w that out of 1,346 director r disqualifications, more than half of the total – 711 cases – were for “unfair treatment of the he Crown”, in other words HM Revenue and Customs.
UNFAIR
“Unfair treatment of the Crown can range from cases where a director had made a conscious decision to pay other creditors and not HM Revenue and Customs, to cases where a director has defrauded or att empt ed to d efraud HM Revenue and Customs,” it says in the latest Insolvency Service annual report.
Since 2016 HMRC has prosecuted 4,123 people and last year raised an extra £5billion by tackling non-compliance.
Only a few cases ever get much attention. There was Dominic Chappell, who notoriously bought BHS from Philip Green’s Arcadia empire for £1 and was jailed in November for six years for evading tax of £584,000.
The cheats usually get away with little publicity, something I intend changing as of today, because I don’t think that tax dodgers are treated with the contempt they deserve.
They ’re thought of a bit like
drink-drivers were 30 years ago – no worse than carefree rebels.
Now drink-drivers are rightly despised and the same should go for anyone who deprives the country of money that could pay for doctors, nurses, ventilators and vaccines.
Take 67-year-old Clive Waters who ran a food wholesale firm and was last week jailed for 26 months
for f raudulently claiming over £600,000 in VAT repayments.
The case has only been reported in his local Somerset newspaper – until now.
“Tax fraud is not a victimless crime,” said a spokesman for HMRC after the hearing. “It steals funding from our vital public services.” Last week brothers Carlos and Fernando
De La Cruz Vidal were each banned from being directors for six years.
They ran a Mexican restaurant in fashionable Portobello Road, West London, called Santo, and over three years understated their takings by £173,000 and overstated the amount of non
taxable earnings.
BANNED
“Customers have a right to expect that the tax they pay on their food is given to the tax authorities,” said Lawrence Zussman, deputy head of insolvent investigations at the Insolvency Service.
“Instead, Carlos and Fernando De La Cruz Vidal substantially under-declared the tax due.” Anoth er recently bann ed restaurant boss is Jose Cacio, who proudly posted on Facebook a picture of f ormer Labour Home Secretar y Jack Straw visiting his pizzeria in Mitcham, South London.
Ca c i o d eli b e rat ely u n d e r declared VAT, leaving the taxman £140,000 out of pocket and got a six-year disqualification.
Some bosses have no excuse for not knowing the rules – like Leslie Eriera who’s an accountant who didn’t produce accounts for his company Swift Supplies & Services Ltd in Ilford, Essex. Th e 61-year -ol d was given a seven-year directorship ban after the company shut down.
An investigation showed that it had unpaid tax liabilities but had paid £1,183,517 to unknown third parties, £161,640 to a connected business, and even siphoned away £40,000 from its bank account after the company was presented with a winding up petition.