Bolton served with winding-up petition by HMRC over unpaid tax bill
The financial crisis at Bolton Wanderers has become critical after Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs issued a winding-up petition for unpaid PAYE tax and VAT, the club have confirmed. Bolton, who were in the Premier League for 11 years until relegation in 2012 , announced they could not pay their players’ wages for last month, and have also not paid the PAYE due on those wages.
The winding-up petition is set to be heard in court on 18 January and Trevor Birch, the insolvency practitioner advising the board, is battling to raise sufficient money to keep the club trading and avoid Bolton having to go into administration. If that did happen it would make it very unlikely for creditors, including HMRC, to be paid in full, and result under Football League rules in a deduction of 12 points. With Wanderers already bottom of the Championship, that would make relegation a certainty, according to the manager, Neil Lennon.
“We would be a League One team … just fulfilling fixtures for the rest of the season,” he said. Lennon added that players may have to be sold in January, but the club need money to keep going until then.
Despite their years earning Premier League TV income, Bolton consistently had a high wage bill, made heavy losses and relied financially on the owner, the Isle of Man-based former Boltonian Eddie Davies, who has said he will not provide any further funding.
Birch has stated that Davies is owed a total of £185m in loans, which he is prepared to write off if anybody can be found to take over the club. Davies is understood not to be seeking substantial money either for the club itself, which he owns via Fildraw, a private trust registered in the tax haven of Bermuda.
Two consortiums have expressed an interest in buying the club, one fronted by the club’s former striker Dean Holdsworth, the other with some backing understood to be in Dubai.
Both are understood to be borrowing money, and neither has yet produced the funds to complete a deal.
Birch is now likely to examine selling the hotel and offices on the Macron Stadium site, or borrowing against those assets, to raise short-term money necessary for the club to remain solvent.
Bolton said in their statement that they had asked for more time to pay the tax owed, but that HMRC proceeded to serve the petition. “Quite clearly the club remains in a critical financial position,” Birch said. “We will continue to try and finalise a sale or alternatively raise some short-term funds needed to give the club a breathing space and time in which to consider its options.”
