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- Are we sitting on a “time to pay” time bomb?
Friday 27 November 2009 -
Dains are warning that the government’s tax deferral scheme - The Business Payment Support Service (BPSS) for struggling companies may have created a dam of corporate insolvencies that is about to burst.
The BPSS allows payment of Crown taxes including PAYE, National Insurance and VAT to be deferred for up to six months. However, since the introduction of time to pay arrangements nearly twelve months ago, latest figures show that over three billion has been deferred in payments to HMRC.
Whilst the number of insolvencies is on the increase this has been lower than expected and the general consensus is that this is as a direct result of time to pay arrangements artificially supporting companies and masking the problem.
Nicki Hawksley, Business Recovery and Insolvency Partner at Dains comments: “A company which could not afford to pay its tax bills six months ago will have to have performed miraculously to be able to pay them off now. The sums are worrying and already questions are being asked about how much of these deferred payments the Revenue will eventually realise, some advisers are asking is this scheme facilitating deferred payment or deferred insolvency?”
The UK insolvency sector had been anticipating much higher figures for companies going into administration or receivership in 2009. This suggests there is a dam insolvencies is just waiting to burst and that only the cement of the Business Payment Support Service has kept it intact so far.
Nicki continues: “Our experience shows that major problems will be encountered when the time to pay arrangements come to an end. The businesses we have been advising are just managing to break even on their monthly cash flows with a time to pay agreement in place. Very often there is no surplus cash available for when payments should return to normal.
“Before it is too late we are encouraging businesses who have deferred to discuss their forecasts for the future months with an adviser and if necessary seek advice from an Insolvency Practitioner on the options available to them, before it is too late to defuse the time bomb they may have created.”
For more information please contact Nicki Hawksley on tel: 0845 555 8844 or email nhawksley@dains.com
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