Taxable Talk

A friend sent me a link to a news story; she headlined it in her email, “Russell Fox caught as tax evader; must repay 200,000.” And then I took a look at the story:

A fish and chip shop owner who was caught dodging tax has been given two weeks to pay £200,000 back to the tax office – or spend three years behind bars.

Russell Fox, who lives in Maidstone, was caught out by HM Revenue and Customs investigators who found he had been lying about the income of his business, the Little Fish Shop in Sandgate, for six years.

Maidstone is in England, near Kent. I don’t own a fish and chips store.

Seriously, that Mr. Fox (no relation to me) appears to have some serious tax troubles. He didn’t pay his income tax, he didn’t pay his health insurance fees, and he cheated on the Value Added Tax (VAT). Adding to his troubles, he was apparently caught destroying evidence. I don’t care if you’re fighting the IRS or HMRC, getting caught destroying evidence is not a good idea.

As noted in the quote, that Mr. Fox must make restitution of £200,000 (over $322,000 at today’s exchange rate). That will buy a lot of fish and chips.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2012 at 8:03 pm and is filed under Tax Evasion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.