Acacia Management Services has been named on the latest HMRC list of avoidance promoters and faced a winding up petition last autumn following an investigation by the HMRC counter avoidance team over an unpaid tax debt for £494,198.88 in unpaid VAT and PAYE.

The business was put into liquidation last November after the winding up petition from HMRC.

Sole director Jake Hamill resigned in October, just 18 months after setting up the business and never filed any accounts.

The administrator’s report from November showed that Acacia Management Services had £372,566 in cash at the bank when it was wound up, but owed HMRC £404,198.88 in unpaid VAT and a further £90,000 in PAYE.

The insolvency practitioner indicated that as the sole preferential creditor, HMRC would be paid most of the tax debt, leaving £121,632 in unpaid tax when the company’s affairs were resolved.

Trade and expenses creditors were owed £66,409 but there will be no funds to settle this debt, although £10,000 of this was claimed by Hamill himself. Other significant creditors were Smart Pension and ASW Solicitors.

It is not clear what action anyone who signed up to one of the tax avoidance schemes operated by Acacia Management Services can take.

In line with a number of other schemes on the market, the company made scheme users to enter into a contract of employment and an optional grant agreement, paying them in a mixture of taxed national minimum wage rates and a second untaxed payment described as an ’option grant’.

HMRC’s view is that the option grant payments are no different to normal income, and tax and NIC’s are payable. This was set out in HM