West Lothian company director pleads guilty to £120,000 PAYE tax fraud

The businessman pleaded guilty at an Edinburgh court this week

A West Lothian businessman admitted to carrying out a tax fraud of more than £120,000, when he appeared in an Edinburgh courtroom this week.

Samuel Crawford failed to pay the large sum of employees’ National Insurance contributions to HMRC over a near six year period while he was a director of the Bathroom Studio in Bathgate.

Crawford, 72, appeared at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Monday where he pleaded guilty to an amended charge of being knowingly concerned in the fraudulent evasion of PAYE relating to a number of employees amounting to £128, 589.26 between July 2011 and April 2017.

Prosecutor Connor Muir told the court Crawford and his niece Caroline Irvine were directors of Bathroom Studio West Lothian Ltd and the company had 19 employees at the time of the offence.

Mr Muir said Ms Irvine dealt with “drawing designs, ordering stock and sometimes dealing with overtime” while Crawford was said to have control over the “accounting and pay” of the staff.

The court heard the firm started in 2011 but did not apply for a PAYE employer reference number until two years later due a delay between the inception of the company and trading beginning.

The fiscal depute said there had been an initial problem regarding the company’s PAYE registration and repeated attempts by Crawford to submit returns had been “unsuccessful”.

Samuel Crawford, 72, appeared at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Monday where he pleaded guilty to being knowingly concerned in the fraudulent evasion of PAYE relating to a number of employees at Bathroom Studio West Lothian Ltd.

Mr Muir said: “HMRC became aware of issues at the company when one of the employees contacted them regarding his employment and he did not believe National Insurance was being paid by the company on his behalf.”

An investigation was launched and a number of employees “confirmed they did not receive any pay slips or paperwork from the company unless they asked”.

Mr Muir added: “The small amount of of payslips and other paperwork provided, were all provided by the accused and showed National Insurance Contributions had been deducted from their pay.

“HMRC confirmed that there was no evidence of National Insurance ever been paid by the company.”

The fiscal said a warrant was granted to raid the business premises in December 2017 and during the search “officers found handwritten workings of each employee’s NI contribution payments” written by Crawford.

Mr Muir added: “The accused has produced documents and payslips to employees that show National Insurance being taken off their pay but has never paid that amount to HMRC on their behalf.

“The accused partially started the process to start paying National Insurance Tax for his employees. However, he failed to notify HMRC of any employees, and as such they were not expecting payments to be paid.”

The court was told Crawford, of Torphichen, Bathgate, had provided his staff with “what looked like legitimate payslips with NI taken off” and the total amount owed to HMRC was £128, 589.26. 

The fiscal said following Crawford’s arrest in March 2018 “the longstanding PAYE registration issue was resolved” and payments for the years following the tax evasion had been paid in full.

Sheriff Wendy Sheehan deferred sentence for reports and for the defence team to continue negotiations with HMRC regarding repayment of the outstanding sum to next month.