I think we can say with some confidence that everyone involved is pretty sure of themselves.

You sound pretty sure of yourself.

Can someone explain how HMRC could be paid when Ryan Whitcut & Mark Moore were not officially the owners of the Club - I seem to remember Andrew Calvert saying there was an unpaid tax bill of £60,000 approx. which would be paid on establishment of new Company? Hence the confusion of who knew what & when.

Adey is the man re tax etc but in general you have your QUARTERLY VAT bill and you have your PAYE and NI to pay, and so at any given time you are bound to "owe" the taxman a six figure sum but it isn't due or payable yet.

The sum currently being mentioned for HMRC is only 170K which a business our size could run up in VAT PAYE and NI in short order. It is feasible that there was no OUTSTANDING HMRC debt when Whitcut left and at the same time we did know what the build-up of shortly-to-be-payable debt was. Like a normal business, in fact.

It is also feasible - and indeed very likely - that HMRC would be watching Bradford Bulls like a hawk, and you could move from no actual payable debt to a winding up notice very quickly - if something became due but they couldn't pay it then HMRC may well have moved very quickly and probably did.
So in that respect what RW has said is perfectly believable.

So far as HMRC were concerned the customer was OKBL and it owed the money. Who was running it makes no odds at all.

When an "owner led" administration happens, it is often the case that in the build up, HMRC are not paid, as there is a big temptation to use that money for outgoings safe in the knowledge that HMRC can't do anything about it. I am not of course saying that that's what happened with us - but just that it is a pretty common situation.

In general, if a business is making a big loss prior to going into Administration (and VATable expenditure is greater than VATable income) the taxman would owe you money in respect of VAT. IF this applied to Bradford Bulls (I've not seen the VAT returns), the figure mentioned could be a net figure say 3 months' or more PAYE and NI.

Not true when you biggest expense is salaries which aren't vatable

So according to Wooden head, if a club makes a big loss, then HMRC will owe the club money! Brilliant. We must be rich, then! Why doesn't everybody do it, I wonder? I think I will write and complain to them, though, as I feel them having issued a winding up petition against OKB is a tad unfair if as Wooden head states in fact they owed us money, not the other way round. They probably just mistook a + for a -


Thank you for clarifying that, because otherwise I am sure we would all naturally have assumed that the club copied you personally in on all such official documents.

An interesting snippet I hear about the creditors meeting. Bear in mind that there would have been no meeting had OK not insisted. And so the RFL would not have claimed a penny as a creditor, since they were not mentioned in the original creditors list. Nor were they mentioned as a creditor in the administrator's report. Nor did they appear in the Statement of Affairs. However at the meeting they seemingly suddenly appeared as creditors claiming in excess of £900k. Had they forgotten?

Thought 900k RFL were claiming was a personal guarantee from OK himself rather than against OKBulls?.

I have only just got up to speed with RW's twittering which is clearly very interesting. On one specific point - I was told almost a year ago by two different people (neither of whom were OK himself) that there was a clear racist attitude towards Omar at Red Hall. It wasn't at all subtle and one of the individuals who told me would certainly be in a position to know. He was clearly shocked by it.

Your 1st post, you must be Whitcut.

I just cannot see the RFL having a racist attitude towards Omar. I just can't. Incompetent, yes. Racist No.