Muhammed Katib declares himself dead to avoid VAT penalty

[Siegfried Shrink]

Could it be that some dimwit at HMRC saw a figure of 4,000,000 held in the hungarian bank account and assumed that was euros?

There is mention of the Hungarian acount being closed with no records available.
There is mention of HMRC not having used treaty powers to obtain the information the bank would still be holding.

Who knows?

[Mike_p]

There is mention of the Hungarian acount being closed with no records available.
There is mention of HMRC not having used treaty powers to obtain the information the bank would still be holding.

Who knows?

Based on lack of returns and a company that had miniscule turnover, how would HMRC assume a turnover that would justify a £150k vat demand?

I'm actually following up on previous posts that speculated on how the business suddenly had such a large t/o. My premise is that maybe it didn't.

[Hercule Parrot]

What is "carousel fraud"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_t ... usel_fraud

[Burnaby49]

What is "carousel fraud"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_t ... usel_fraud

Very similar, or the same, to what goes on here. Except the ones that make the newspapers don't involve any business at all. They are all paperwork fakes.

[longdog]

I did wonder if a company I worked for was a VAT fiddle but from the links it seems not as it had been running for years. I was the 'manager' of five 'workers' none of who (including me) ever really did anything. The guy above me turned up every Friday with our wage packets, picked up the week's post and pissed off again. Tax fiddle? Money laundering? I thought it best not to ask and in the end I left because I just couldn't stand the boredom even if was well paid boredom.

[The Seventh String]

So is he actually a solicitor looking to get struck off, or just another LARPer?

A quick search of the Solicitor’s Regulation Authority website for Michael Bridger, Mike Bridger and Sovereign Associates finds no hits on any of those names.

[The Seventh String]

Based on lack of returns and a company that had miniscule turnover, how would HMRC assume a turnover that would justify a £150k vat demand?

It’s one way they sometimes use to get the attention of people whose filed tax return doesn’t look very plausible, or people they have serious doubts about or who don’t/won’t communicate with them.

Send a big tax bill, wait for the howl of outrage from the taxpayer, then suggest that to sort things out the taxpayer needs to visit their offices for a chat. And to bring their company books and bank statements with them.

And if the taxpayer doesn’t show up proceed with collection.