Dominic Chappell owes more than £500,000 to the taxman on the profits he made from owning BHS, the collapsed department store chain.
HMRC has started legal proceedings against the disgraced businessman to try to recover the money. However, Chappell has put the business that owes the tax, Swiss Rock Limited, into liquidation, meaning he could walk away without paying the bill.
Swiss Rock owes £365,000 in VAT and £196,306 in corporation tax, according to documents drawn up by Chappell and David Rubin & Partners, which has been appointed as liquidator.
The company is also listed as owing £56,000 in “trade and expense” and £15,000 to Chappell from a loan account. It has debts with Cornhill Capital, the City firm that advised Chappell before his purchase of BHS, but the amount is recorded as disputed.
Swiss Rock is Chappell’s personal business and was paid at least £1.6m by BHS as part of his controversial acquisition of the department store chain. In total, the consortium led by Chappell that bought BHS, Retail Acquisitions, received at least £17m from the retailer despite owning it for just 13 months before it failed.
The revelation of Chappell’s unpaid tax bill will further infuriate the 11,000 BHS staff who have lost their jobs and face a cut to their retirement benefits. The last of BHS’s 164 stores closed last month after it collapsed into administration in April.
In July, Chappell and his associates were labelled as “incompetent and self-serving” by a parliamentary committee investigating the failure of BHS. MPs accused Chappell of having “had his fingers in the till” and helping oversee the “systematic plunder” of the business.
Chappell declined to comment. Last month he confirmed to the Guardian that Swiss Rock would enter insolvency proceedings but said it was because he is no longer using the company.
The Insolvency Service and the Pensions Regulator are investigating Chappell, while the Serious Fraud Office is considering whether to launch a formal investigation.
HMRC does not comment on individual cases but said its aim is to “efficiently collect the debts due and to prevent things deteriorating further”. It filed a petition at the high court to wind up Swiss Rock before Chappell liquidated the company.
Chappell bought BHS for £1 from Sir Philip Green in March 2013. Green is in talks with the Pensions Regulator about a deal to bail out the BHS pension scheme, which has a deficit of £571m.
The tycoon, his family and other BHS investors collected more than £580m from the company during the 15 years he ran it.
Green told MPs in June he would “sort” the pension deficit. However, he is yet to secure an agreement, despite pressure from MPs such as Frank Field, who has said Green should be stripped of his knighthood if he does not pump money into the pension scheme.