Three individuals and companies in the North East have been named and shamed by HMRC for almost £400,000 worth of unpaid tax between them.

HMRC publishes details every three months of people and businesses given financial penalties for failing to comply with tax obligations, or deliberately filing errors in tax returns. The latest list was published on Thursday (September 21).

Details are only released when a person or business has made at least one deliberate default on more than £25,000 of tax.

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Among those named and shamed on the newly released list are Haytrax Ltd, a Middlesbrough-based machinery repair company, which was charged whopping penalties of more than £132,000 on almost £200,000 of defaulted tax spanning a one-year period.

In total almost £400,000 of defaulted tax was racked up by three businesses or individuals.

Here are the names of those named and shamed on the HMRC list published this month.

Derek McElvaney

Landscape gardener Derek McElvaney, of Jackson Drive Stokesley, Middlesbrough defaulted on £54,775.81 worth of tax between April 2015 and April 2020.

He was charged penalties of £31,876.42.

Haytrax Ltd

Machinery repair company Haytrax Ltd, formerly based at Borough Road, Middlesbrough and a site in Ipswich racked up a total of £193,844 of defaulted tax.

It defaulted the mammoth amount over the course of a year between January 2021 and the same month in 2022. It was charged penalties of £132,298.52.


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Andrew William Cox

Cox, an energy consultant and writer, trading as ‘Energy intelligence and marketing research’ defaulted on £147,655 of tax over ten years between November 2011 and January 2020.

The Newcastle-based consultant, based on Sandyford Road, will have to pay penalties for the entire amount.

The information above was listed on the government website on the day this story was published.