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9am Lowdown: Late payers to be named and shamed

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26th Feb 2015
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The news headlines this morning feature late paying businesses being named and shamed, McDonald’s accused of tax avoidance and a Cheltenham nightclub boss jailed over VAT fraud. Here’s the Thursday 9am Lowdown.

Late payers will be named and shamed

The government will name and shame some of the UK’s biggest businesses unless they radically improve the treatment of their supply chains.

According to The Times, the new regime comes in the wake of criticism of the Prompt Payment Code for appearing to allow companies to pay lip-service to good supplier relations while taking 120 days or longer to settle their bills.

Business minister Matthew Hancock added that the 1,786 companies on the government’s prompt payment code must abide by tougher rules or face expulsion from the scheme.

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McDonald’s accused of tax avoidance

Trade unions have accused McDonald’s of avoiding more than €1bn in taxes across Europe in another example of Luxembourg helping multinationals to slash their tax liabilities.

As reported in Bloomberg, McDonald’s routed billions of euros in royalties from its European operations to benefit from a Luxembourg tax loophole.

A new report will be published today by a coalition of European and US labour groups.

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Cheltenham nightclub boss jailed over VAT fraud

The former company director of The Prom Club has been jailed for eight months following an investigation by HMRC.

Cheltenham nightclub director Paul Regan falsified invoices for VAT repayments for over a year after the nightclub ceased trading in May 2012.

In addition to the custodial sentence, a confiscation order was also granted.

He has been ordered to repay £23,682 in full within six months or serve a further 12 months in jail, according to the Gloucestershire Echo.

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By abaco
26th Feb 2015 10:57

Late Payers

Where late payment on such a scale results in the failure of what can be evidenced as an otherwise perfectly good business, legislation should allow an action for damages that can be shown to have resulted from that.

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Chris M
By mr. mischief
26th Feb 2015 11:06

I will start the list of late payers

HMRC

Very very slow payers, especially with regard to the construction sector.  Please haul them in, Danny Boy!

Thanks (2)
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By redboam
02nd Mar 2015 07:58

Name and Shame?

I recently came across this site which invites businesses to name big business clients who unilaterally extending payment terms. Perhaps more of our clients should be aware of this:

https://www.fpb.org/creating-change/case-studies/late-payment-hall-shame

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