Husband not been paying tax for years

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I'm so worried and scared. Over a year ago two debt collectors came to our door and handed me a letter addressed to my husband. I opened it and it said we owed approx £500k to the taxman. I nearly collapsed.

When my husband came home I confronted him and he basically broke down saying he hadn't been paying tax on his Ltd company for about 5 years. He'd liquidised his company without my knowledge and taken me off as Company Secretary presumably so I wouldn't find out and to extricate me from any financial liability. We had to get a tax lawyer to negotiate on our behalf with the debt collectors and after many months of wrangling, my husband told me it was £64k we owed which we could put our savings towards and also set up a direct debit and pay the rest monthly.

Fast forward a year, I had two debt collectors standing at my front door. It turns out my husband has been lying about the amount owed...it's in actual fact £150k. I'm horrified, my heart's racing as I'm writing this. He told me over the phone he'd used £30k of our son's trust fund money towards it. He told me he's incapable of saying no to me (?!) and he knows he's got emotional problems.

I don't understand any of this...I'm in my 50s, yes, I like nice things (who doesn't) but never overspent in terms of the money that's in our account and was surplus after all bills are paid. He didn't come home last night, he's too ashamed and embarrassed and keeps telling me he's no good and I deserve better. I've been with this man for over 30 years and can't imagine life without him, although I massively resent him at this point.

I found out he'd taken his watch (a present for his 50th) to a pawnbroker to get a £1,500 per loan against the watch. He said it was to pay off the rest owed to the tax lawyer. I asked (shouted) why the hell did he not come to me as I'd managed to put some money aside. Again, he was too embarrassed and said he just wanted it sorted and out the way. I ended up giving him over £2k to get the watch back.

I'm worried sick. How on earth do I deal with this without knowing whether he's lying or not? I don't have access to his business account because I'm not company secretary. I have access to everything else (I think?).

I'm mostly disgusted at my son's trust fund. He's 21, and it was meant to be for a down payment on a flat at some point. Now there's nothing. My son's now aware of this and thinks I should leave his dad as he can't be trusted. What do you think? Any advice would be extremely welcome.

We're not fixating at all, the thread's just 22 pages in and people are chatting about different points, is that not allowed? We can all keep posting that she can downsize though if you'd prefer. Plus she has said she'd 'love a part-time job', and has applied for some to no avail, so it's hardly off-piste as a discussion.

Why so touchy? Of course it's 'allowed'.

The last few posts have been about the work she can do.

She's not said much about work other than she didn't get interviews when she applied. She's not engaged with any of the suggestions at all.

No but the discussion has broadened and some posts are more generally about what jobs are suggested to mums on here and the opinions on that. Guess I'm touchy as it comes across like you're trying to tell people what they should post, and it's a long thread with its own life, beyond purely suggestions for the OP, of which there have been hundreds and many of them she hasn't engaged with. Which is fine.

You’ve clearly not read my posts I am extremely familiar with this. Your posts are full of misunderstood Google.

whether he got reminders or not isn’t under debate. No one has said he pretended he didn’t know about it. Not sure how that’s relevant

@ScarletVelvetSlippers I think the only issue with that is that at their age they might not get enough for anything but a short mortgage and depends on his credit record too, which might not be good. The ones you can get that are lifetime mortgages will only allow up to around 35% loan to value if you are only in your 50s - around 50/50 if in your 70s - however what might work is a RIO ( interest only) which is a lifetime mortgage but you still have to pay the interest - as these often go up to 70% -

Just to be clear, not paying your taxes is theft. You’re not the victim here. The rest of us who keep paying and paying and paying whilst others evade with impunity are.

FYIF I've not googled anything. Don't be so presumptive.
I know from RL experience what can happen.
If you're a tax lawyer fine- keep offering OP advice.

I don’t think I could stay with a man like that.

Ring StepChange debt charity (think they have a new name) and Citizens Advice for help. But I think you may have to face selling your house to pay the debt.

I’d also go to HMRC directly and ask them exactly what is owed.

Not sure if it has already been asked, but have you been on Companies House to check the status of the company? Check to see if it really is dissolved, liquidated, etc. From here you can also access the annual returns, etc. Worth getting the "true" picture of where things stand,

Really? That long list of co sec responsibilities wasn’t googled? Anyone who has worked in governance or accounting knows the reality of co secs in tiny businesses.

Stepchange wont be able to handle something this complex. HMRC won’t talk to her, only her husband.

I missed that bit 🫣 yes you might be right. Each gets a turn to prove themselves.

Yes if it’s corporation tax but if it’s a debt of a limited company it could be VAT or PAYE and NI deductions in respect of employees. I still don’t understand the status of the business, has this been clarified?

I think it was a one man company - perhaps he was a contractor

ultimately it could be fraud because the company had the income to pay the taxes but he chose to take them out instead

if he told his accountant he’d paid the taxes then his accounts would be wrong

if he was spending the money on the company bank account on personal expenses and not taking the money out legitimately he has also potentially committed theft

I agree it does sound like OP's H may be a Contractor, probably in Oil and/or Gas
DH is a Contractor and we know quite a few, getting into trouble with Taxes isn't unusual for Contractors - they see their Day rate and think they earn that much but they don't really OR they get sucked in by unscrupulous Umbrella Companies offering Tax Avoidance schemes that turn out to be Tax Evasion schemes and get into trouble that way

It’s long liquidated, OP has said it’s liquidated, a deal has been done with HMrC (whatever branch of that it might be) and he has now fallen behind on the payment plan he agreed for the debt he owes them. He would be highly unlikely have this deal and payment plan without it being liquidated, the official receiver would have driven it all.

To be fair I don’t think he would’ve been able to withdraw that much cash to pay himself for so long if it wasn’t making money.

one person employed by a Ltd company would be highly unlikely to be paying corporation tax. They’d just take profits as their income.

All of this has been investigated and finalised though. He’s settled with the official receiver and has a repayment plan. If they wanted to prosecute for fraud they would’ve prosecuted him before entering into any payment plan.

There is zero sign of the threat of future action and every sign that the liquidation is over.

also the accounts won’t be wrong if he didn’t pay his tax. It shows your tax liability, not whether or not you’ve paid.

it obviously wasn’t a going concern for the years it was effectively bankrupt but trading, but as long as the accountants had reason to believe it was ok in the medium term they would’ve been legitimately able to sign off the accounts.

Given the OP isn’t coming back I do t think we’ll ever find out the real situation but I doubt very much she has the full picture so it’s all supposition

But it is clear he has entered a payment plan that he’s reneged on and that’s why the debt collectors visited.

The normal course of events is company liquidated, official receiver takes over, becomes an animal, decides whether to criminally prosecute you (rare) if so informs the police; but usually decides on your creditor liability, terrifies you, then enters into negotiation for repayment of as much as possible.
Often takes you to court for this, gets a charge on your property or forced asset sales etc. they didn’t do that this time, maybe because they felt OPs husband was reasonable enough and liquid enough to repay in cash, which is faster and cheaper than the other options.

this all kicked off 5 years ago. It’s highly unlikely there would be any unfinished business or threat of further action after all this time. Of course, if he completely renegs on the payment plan they’ll take him back to court to recover it.

Your replies are very confused (or just plain wrong) and totally mixing up the difference between corporate insolvency and personal bankruptcy. We don't know whether the liquidation was a MVL which would be a solvent liquidation, an Administration, a CVL or a compulsory liquidation with the latter being the only one that would involve the Official Receiver at all.

They’re not at all. Yes OP doesn’t share exactly what happened but not in any way that would significantly change the likely outcome. The situation is clearly well advanced, being 5 years in.

It must be very area dependent. I know a lot of people wanting to get TA work, even with qualifications, they cannot find work. One is registered with every agency going.
When I worked in a school lots of staff asked for TA work but no one was offered any work in the classroom. It’s very competitive where I live.

Likewise.
Parents are queuing up for TA jobs where I live as they are one of the only jobs that fits with school hours and holidays (unless you're a teacher.)

I think it's a bad sign if a school is losing and having to replace a TA so often. It makes it look as if they have problems at the school and changing TAs is certainly not good educationally for the children they support.

@Bambamhoohoo ooh I’m in this position and it doesn’t work like that - unless you do all your earnings after any costs as PAYE ( and most directors don’t do this for tax and NI reasons ) then what you pay yourself in dividends ( or directors loans ) are not deductible against corporation tax - I always end up with a corp tax bill of about £7000 and have now learnt if I actually have the cash in the bank to pay that to stick as much as I can on pension ( which is tax deductible) I have also upped what I pay myself on PAYE - I did all this because I simply got into a mess paying corp tax and ended up with a big ‘time to pay ‘ situation. People do get into a mess because of this and I suspect if we didn’t take PAYE off the non self employed and made them pay up at end of the year , then a lot of the population would get into a mess too - There’s always something that comes along, be it car breaks down, wife :husband wants a holiday, teen needs 1800 for uni house deposit etc -

Divorce, even if its in name only. Have all assets signed over to you as part of the divorce. That makes you safer. Then take all the time you need to think.