Accountant in the dock after VAT probe
A LIVERPOOL accountant has been found guilty of a tax fraud worth more than £64,000.
Last week Alan Goddard, 61, from Maghull, who ran his own practice, Alan Goddard Accountants, was sentenced to two years in prison suspended for two years, given a 300-hour unpaid community work order and issued with £1,500 court costs after being found guilty in September.
He also now faces legal action to recover the stolen tax and has already agreed to repay over £64,000 pending further penalty assessments by HMRC.
Goddard of Grange Park, was found to have pocketed the VAT he had charged his clients for more than five years. The evasion was discovered as part of the HMRC VAT Outstanding Returns (VATOR) campaign, which targeted businesses that failed to submit VAT returns in 2013.
Sandra Smith, assistant director at the Fraud Investigation Service at HMRC, said: “As an accountant Goddard was in a position of trust and well aware that he was breaking the law.
“He chose to do this for the opportunity of making what he wrongly assumed would be easy money at the expense of UK taxpayers. He now has a criminal record and his professional reputation is now ruined.
Goddard’s business was registered for VAT trading in April 2008. In January 2013, HMRC wrote to Goddard under the VATOR campaign to remind him to submit VAT returns.
Even after a visit from HMRC inspectors to encourage him to submit his VAT returns in March 2014, Goddard failed to submit a single return but continued to trade as an accountant. The HMRC investigation showed that between 2008 and 2014, Goddard had kept more than £64,000 in VAT payments from his clients, which should have been paid to HMRC.
