Tony Mitchell
Tony's recent articles
- Retention of Title - 34 years Old and Counting
19th August - Right First Time
15th April - When Business Meets Fantasy
18th February
Taxing Times For Dodgy Directors
17th June 2010 13:11
Whilst sitting in my office in Coventry the other day I read an article about how HMRC were getting tough on Dodgy Directors. It reported that the number of directors of insolvent firms facing disqualification proceedings for not paying business tax has jumped 24 per cent in the year to March 2010.
Very impressive I thought until I started to think about how the number of directors facing disqualification compared to the total population of directors of insolvent companies who have a report submitted to The Insolvency Service by insolvency practitioners each year. It also prompted me to re-read Brett’s blog last year entitled “Three in four ‘dodgy’ directors go unpunished”.
In 2009 there were 23,238 Administrations and Liquidations in England and Wales. If we assume that on average each company has two directors, this gives a total of 46,476 directors last year who have or will have a report submitted about them to The Insolvency Service by the appointed insolvency practitioner.
The figures quoted in the article I was reading reported that that a total of 813 directors had proceedings brought against them in court for non-payment of company tax in the year ending 31 March 2010. This compared with 654 in the previous year. So indeed there had been a significant jump in the first quarter’s figures but put this into context, the total number of actions last year was 0.014% of the total number of directors that could have had an action taken against them.
Statistics are a wonderful thing and can be made to read whatever the author wishes. However, I think it fair to say that HMRC, no doubt under Central Government pressure, is stepping up its game and the number of director disqualification prosecutions is likely to rise over the next twelve months, subject to funding being available.
