Chip shop owner found guilty of failing to pay thousands in tax

Erlinda Carter has been sentenced to pay a fine of £4,000. Credit: ITV Channel

The owner of a Jersey fish and chip shop has been fined after failing to file returns and racking up a bill of over £8,000 in unpaid tax.

Erlinda Carter from St Helier was taken to the Magistrate's Court by the island's tax authority, Revenue Jersey, for failing to file monthly returns for her business and pay her employee's ITIS contributions between January 2022 and April 2023.

She has been ordered to pay a fine of £4,000, as well as the unpaid ITIS bill, or face up to 24 weeks in prison.

Amanda Sloan, the island's Assistant Revenue Comptroller, said that there had been an "unfair impact" on employees.

She said: "Non-filing means we do not know what tax the employer has already deducted from employees’ salaries, and can’t know whether the employer has been paying the correct, or any amount over to us.

“Non-filing can lead to very serious situations where employees, for instance needing sickness benefits, find themselves ineligible as their deducted contributions have not been paid over by their employer resulting in large gaps on their employees’ records.

"It can also cause employees’ ITIS rates to rise sharply".

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