Council tax rebate firm wound-up for ‘misleading’ customers

A LANCASHIRE firm has been wound up in the High Court after it took £1m from homeowners for council tax appeals but did not secure rebates.

The court heard Bury-based Dalton & Dalton Tax Consultants made misleading and unfounded statements and sold a service which provided no commercial benefit to nearly all its customers.

The company made unsolicited calls to potential customers and took an upfront fee of £165 for conducting an appeal. If successful, it said it would retain 25%.

But an investigation by the Insolvency Service found the firm banked £1.08m mostly from upfront fees. Only £17,688 came from success fees. Just 1% of the 2,750 council tax challenges made by the company were successful. The company was owned by Shahzad Hussain who was a director along with Rizwan Zahid and Nadeem Sharif.

Colin Cronin, an investigation supervisor with the Insolvency Service, said: “Dalton & Dalton Tax Consultants grossly overstated its ability to achieve council tax re-banding and rebates for its customers, thereby inducing customers to pay an advance fee of £165 for this service.

“It is telling that the company’s income was derived almost entirely from these advance fees and very little was from the success fees to which it was entitled if it achieved financial rebates for customers. These winding-up proceedings show that the Insolvency Service will take firm action against companies which mislead the public in this way.”