Parliament has published an estimate of the losses t0 HMRC arising on the liquidation of a service company controlled by Dominic Chappell, who was also the last owner of BHS.
The statement, prepared by my friend Prof Prem Sikka of Essex University, estimates losses to HMRC arising on the liquidation of more than £700,000. Prem suggests that the company might never have paid any of the VAT it charged on the supply of its services to HMRC. It also appears that substantial corporation tax was owing at the time of liquidation.
Prem concludes in the paper that:
I recommend that the matter should be referred to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) with a request to investigate all business dealings of Dominic Chappell and his associates.
I will await developments with interest.
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Prem’s statement is interesting. He says that sums described as trade debtors are really loans. Many hundreds of thousands of pounds. So that would mean these sums could not have been sales. So if adjusted as Prem suggests that would mean less corporation tax due? I guess that’s a good thing as the debt to HMRC is lower.
The sales were to were sales
The cash received was then lent
It’s not hard to follow
And as you are also the guy who posts here under many Nazi names you’re now on the blocked list
A bankrupt either individual or collegial should never ever be allowed to hold directorial office in his/her lifetime.
No Statute of Limitations. Game over.
I do not agree
Bankruptcy can happen without fault
And I disagree with you.
If you are a sole owner, partner or company director you should in all cases have the acumen to see disaster coming and extricate yourself long beforehand either via resignation or sell -up even at a loss.
After all you are in the position in the first place because it is assumed you have a robust degree of business acumen/experience/ entrepreneurial guile such that you are either in a position to anticipate these events well before they can do damage or alternatively bite the bullet and resign / sell up before a crisis becomes a tsunami.
All too easy for especially SME s to declare on Friday and start up Monday with new name same team zero legacy debts.
Unfair. Wrong. But sadly not illegal. Similarly multinational / financial boards should be culled en masse and new brooms installed regardless of individual dereliction prior to bail in/ outs given the decisions are collegial under most Articles of Association ( other
than some ” close” companies). Look at the wetfish knuckle -rap that is being handed out to Wells despite ten years of serial wrongdoing.
So your main customer defaults
Is that your fault?
In the cut throat world of real life business it is indirectly my fault.
Not that he has defaulted but that I did not have my ear sufficientky close to the ground for a sufficiently lengthy period of time to have been aware of the gathering storm in time to extricate my budiness and seek for it
alternative income streams. Obviously thus is not always possible given the speed of certain evolving situations .
But your point does not detract from the fact that a) if my main customer defaults there is nothing I can do except
get in line and hope for future partial Administrator payback before I go bankrupt myself — stuff happens– and b) my bankrupted customer may stil reincarnate as a new registered business with virtually the same directors and my having no legal recourse to claiming any of his oresent /future assets of that new start up in reference to their dereliction towards me ( non payment of outstanding invoices , consequential damage for ordered work in progress stock etc) from the old.