Painter spared jail for dodging £47,000 in tax
A PAINTER and decorator who swindled taxpayers out of thousands of pounds by using a cheque-cashing bureau to dodge VAT was spared jail yesterday.
Kenneth Wheatley failed to hand over £46,868 to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) after he cancelled his account and informed the taxman that his firm, Interiors Plus, would be trading below the VAT threshold.
But the self-employed business owner continued to trade profitably.
Wheatley, of North Berwick, East Lothian, cashed cheques worth close to £300,000 at ClearACheque in Edinburgh’s Tollcross area over a two-year period. But the 50-year-old was caught after police raided the cheque-cashing business over a separate matter and found paperwork relating to Wheatley’s deception.
However, when he appeared at Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday, Wheatley avoided a prison sentence and was instead handed a Restriction of Liberty Order by Sheriff Frank Crowe.
It means the decorator will have to stay inside his home between 9.30pm and 6am for four months.
At an earlier hearing, Wheatley admitted to fraudulently evading VAT and failing to submit returns to HMRC between July 1, 2012, and April 14, 2014.
The court heard he had run the VAT-registered business from 1996 but cancelled the HMRC account in 2010 as ‘his practical turnover would be below the threshold for VAT’.
Fiscal depute Ann McNeill told the court that after the ClearACheque raid, 108 transactions involving Interiors Plus were identified, totalling £289,000. As a result, his home was searched and it ‘became clear... that the sum £46,868.84 had been evaded.’
Yesterday, solicitor David
‘Taxpayers missed out’
Allan, defending, told the court his client owned up immediately and had paid almost all of the money to HMRC.
Interiors Plus employs two tradesmen and all of Wheatley’s tax matters ‘are up to date’, he added.
Sheriff Frank Crowe told the businessman: ‘You may have paid back the money but the way I look at it is this was pretty deliberate for about two years, and we as taxpayers all missed out on that money.
‘I am still within my rights to consider a prison sentence but I recognise you have no record prior to today so I am prepared to issue an alternative to a custodial sentence.’