Jack Monroe #78 All of your food is brown

[Alansbigplate]

Only if she was investigated by HMRC (you can be investigated at any time). If she hadn't paid the corporation tax or VAT on time then they would be wanting to know why so much money was taken out of the business when it should have been set aside for tax first. I don't know the ins and outs as I live in fear of a tax investigation, so I'm scrupulous with my tax and my expenses etc.

I don’t avoid tax I just evade tax

 

[Bumbear]

I would just like to be 100% clear that I am not saying she hasn't paid her tax bill - I do not want the Israeli lawyer onto me! I am sure it was paid in full during the 2019/20 business year and hopefully all the tax due for that year, has been put aside nicely in the business bank account. We shall see at some point in the next few months...

 

[Tabitha D]

How can one be sure it isn't biased. Her standpoint on the elite is biased in my opinion she seems to really dislike them.

To write something political one has to address the issues yet remain neutral to appeal to the entire demographic.

Not only that but, because it is self-edited, it is often incorrect. It can’t be relied on as a source for anything serious (particularly an academic source), and this is lesson no.1 for any student. But Jack is lazy and stupid, and she doesn’t give a stuff about the supposedly serious book she’s supposed to be writing.

 

[TurnedUpInTipp]

"Well isn't that like a cook to bring a knife to a Nutribullet fight.."

 

[Veronicaaa]

Lovely stuff, @Bumbear!

 

[Droosie123]

I would just like to be 100% clear that I am not saying she hasn't paid her tax bill - I do not want the Israeli lawyer onto me! I am sure it was paid in full during the 2019/20 business year and hopefully all the tax due for that year, has been put aside nicely in the business bank account. We shall see at some point in the next few months...

Basically then if she has that tax bill and has paid it then she isn't down on her uppers in any way. Patreon etc.....and she says she pays two thirds of her income in rent.
That I don't believe ...4k in rent isn't believable. I do think she's paying up to 2k a month though. A bungalow in Thorpe Bay isn't going to be cheap to rent.

Ironically she could rent a large two bed flat for well under a grand but she'd have to move a couple of miles and I do get that she might not want to do this at the moment. It's likely her son is now in Y6 though so no reason she couldn't make a move next year to something cheaper.

 

[Tabitha D]

This was while she was was in Edinburgh in Feb 2019. Louisa was with her but the photos were deleted (holding hands outside the castle). I reckon they were in the aparthotel on George Street that Jack went to during lockdown.

Although Louisa is tagged at the Cheval Edinburgh Grand in March 2019, so could’ve been there?

(ETA it’s also an apartment hotel by the looks of things, but looks pricier than the place Jack stayed).

 

[Scotty1976]

Fraus, I need to make a key lime pie but have no limes, can I use vinegar, or bottled lemon juice?

I only had lard in so am making the base with that, will it be OK?

Mackie I have no greaseproof paper to line my baking tin .Will £50 notes do instead ?

 

[Bumbear]

Basically then if she has that tax bill and has paid it then she isn't down on her uppers in any way. Patreon etc.....and she says she pays two thirds of her income in rent.
That I don't believe ...4k in rent isn't believable. I do think she's paying up to 2k a month though. A bungalow in Thorpe Bay isn't going to be cheap to rent.

The corporation tax bill will have had to be paid in full 9 months after the end of the tax year for that company - so by 31 December 2019. It will have been paid in full by now.

Don't forget these are the figures in the year to 31 March 2019 (information publicly available to look at on Companies House). Not the amounts NOW in 2020. They could be entirely different.

You can pay yourself whatever you want as a director of a Ltd company as long as you've got the money coming in - you can also take out loans against the business, but I've no idea about those or how they'd show on the accounts. Personally I don't pay myself everything I take in, in case of lean times - as per 2020 and this pandemic we're in right now...so many freelancers are out of work.

 

[HdBarris]

I was going to comment about this the other day and then wasn't sure if I should!

So she filed a set of micro accounts for the year to 31 March 2019 v late (she was in danger of being struck off). At that point there was £15,995 of cash in the business bank account. She had a tax bill (amounts owed are shown in brackets) of £28,014. This is likely to be the corporation tax owed for that year as it's always paid in arrears.

What that means is that she had insufficient funds in her company bank account for that tax year to pay her tax bill, and will be relying on income from the 2019/20 year to pay it.

I am also a freelancer and I was always taught: 1. Do not take out more from your business bank account than the tax owed because 2. If you have no income (or reduced income the following year) you may not have enough money to pay the tax bill as you still have to pay corporation tax on income from that year as well. This is how people end up going bankrupt when their income drops dramatically in subsequent years and they have spent the money that should be put aside to pay HMRC.

So essentially she's going to be in a cycle of robbing Peter to pay Paul - hence I think the realisation that she needs to cut down.

It's technically fine to run your business account this way as long as times are always good. But clearly she's had no income of any significance since Hellmans. This is why I don't do this because I couldn't sleep at night.

The other thing of interest is the amount of the tax bill. Corporation tax is 19% and is owed on your profits after expenses. At a v rough estimate that means there was a turnover in the business year to 31 March 2019 of approx £147k. We'll ignore VAT as it's paid quarterly and pretty much goes in and out (so is overall usually neutral in a micro company).

We can also see that at the point the accounts were made up, only £16k is held as cash at the bank, therefore approx £131k has been taken out of the business account that year. We know there is an assistant on the books as there are 2 employees shown on the accounts. Let's say including tax and NI the assistant has cost £25k to the business. That leaves a v generous approximation of £106k that will have gone to Jack in that business year.

Tax will also be owed on that via a personal tax return for the dividends or PAYE (however it's been taken out - there's v little difference these days in the overall tax due). If, as she states, she is only paying herself a living wage, then the rest has been put somewhere in her personal bank accounts, as it's not showing on the company bank account.

Obviously I can only comment on what's on the tax return for that year - there is another set of accounts due for the year to March 2020 and it will be interesting to see those when they appear.

I hope this is helpful - I don't remember anyone commenting in this much detail about the accounts at the time they became available. I'm not an accountant but I also run my own business (triangulate me if you dare) and I also file micro accounts, so they're easy for me to read.

I'll now duck off as I'm BUSY today.

Not an accountant either but there's various ways she can do to reduce that old corp tax, such as contributing to her pension or various other legitimate means. And if shes got so little in her business bank account, as you say she must taken an awful lot of dividends/or salary, easily 100k minimum, that means another hefty bill for her personal self-assessment on top- easily £7k just for that one year... Her accountant definitely would have recommended NOT to do that and would have offered various other ways to reduce that tax bill. But of course I am sure she flung caution to the wind and spent a lot of it in Cotswolds shop.

If you're going to be a company, you need to be wise about how you're spending your money. You can't just spend it all and expect the funtimes to continue. As a contractor myself, I have taken some dividends for the year but I have not spent any of it cos you can't expect people to continue your services forever even if you are legitimately competent, just have to prepare to have no funds coming in, esp with the pandemic. Lean times. Classic Mackie, no planning in any aspect of her life.

 

[OhHeck]

She’s talking on twitter about her private and specific prescriptions she’s on as she recovers from burnout. Stop oversharing!!! People are replying with similar sad tales and in fairness she is stating she’s not an expert but you just can’t use a public platform in this way.

The fact this is thinly veiled behind some apparent altruistic PSA is boiling my piss. She is not saying any of this tit to help anyone, she's just on another sadfishing expedition.

 

[Tabitha D]

She’s mentioned this consultancy work a couple of times, but not nearly as much as I’d have expected if it was a legit role

2019:

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2020:

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I reckon she did a bit of food consultancy but very little, if anything, of what she suggested was used. Because her specialty is inedible slop and that isn’t exactly sellable. Otherwise, her name would have appeared on menus or promotions for these places.

 

[bazzam]

Not an accountant either but there's various ways she can do to reduce that old corp tax, such as contributing to her pension or various other legitimate means. And if shes got so little in her business bank account, as you say she must taken an awful lot of dividends/or salary, easily 100k minimum, that means another hefty bill for her personal self-assessment on top- easily £7k just for that one year... Her accountant definitely would have recommended NOT to do that and would have offered various other ways to reduce that tax bill. But of course I am sure she flung caution to the wind and spent a lot of it in Cotswolds shop.

If you're going to be a company, you need to be wise about how you're spending your money. You can't just spend it all and expect the funtimes to continue. As a contractor myself, I have taken some dividends for the year but I have not spent any of it cos you can't expect people to continue your services forever even if you are legitimately competent, just have to prepare to have no funds coming in, esp with the pandemic. Lean times. Classic Mackie, no planning in any aspect of her life.

and she has had recent very wealthy partners, probably hasn't considered being careful with money for quite a few years now.

 

[Bumbear]

Not an accountant either but there's various ways she can do to reduce that old corp tax, such as contributing to her pension or various other legitimate means. And if shes got so little in her business bank account, as you say she must taken an awful lot of dividends/or salary, easily 100k minimum, that means another hefty bill for her personal self-assessment on top- easily £7k just for that one year... Her accountant definitely would have recommended NOT to do that and would have offered various other ways to reduce that tax bill. But of course I am sure she flung caution to the wind and spent a lot of it in Cotswolds shop.

Absolutely x

She could have bunged up to £40k into her pension as an employer contribution, and we don't know what expenses went through. We can only tell that the corporation tax bill on the profits after expenses was c. £29k. Actual turnover could have been much higher - unfortunately we don't get to see the full P&L on this set of micro accounts!

 

[Malacandra]

A

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View attachment 255828
People are still offering her things and she’s ever so sanctimoniously telling them to give them away and she would hate to think of things going to her instead of others.

C-c-c-cleaning hacks???? Start off with emptying your bin, giving it a good scrub (and sort out your piggin’ mitts while you’re at it) and then attacking the crud on your hob before giving domestic advice to anyone you plonker.

 

[Bugger13]

Being a bit harsh to jack over the jewellery there. Clearly a cheeky magpie who lives in the wisteria and wears a waistcoat flew into jewellers shops and dropped sparkly things in puddles that the sunlight twinkled off and caught the eye of maverick jack who then posted numerous times on Facebook pages that she’d stumbled across a huge hoard of treasures and asked who was the rightful owner was. Obviously nobody came forward to claim them so she’s ‘taking care’ of them. Bless her tattered, old, cheap socks.

 

[Captainmouse]

ONE OF THE BIGGEST STORIES OF OUR TIME..... FINDING BURBERRY
View attachment 255909

Thread title #finding Burberry

 

[HarderFaster]

It's interesting, given the quite significant amount of money she has coming in, how little she invests back into the business i.e. developing herself. I have no real evidence of that, of course, other than the increasingly desperate TV appearances where she can't even read from a script properly and her continuing inability to use a knife. Media training, my arse. And no, Jack, buying yourself fancy camera equipment doesn't count as a long term business investment.

I was at the gym this morning, it's a proper bro gym on an old industrial estate. It's a great place to work out and the owner will always get whatever piece of equipment you want from wherever if he doesn't have something. I saw him get in his car today and it was the most ancient, clapped out Ford Focus. But I think that's great, because he's clearly putting every penny back into building his empire.

The money Jack's accounts confirm that she is bringing in could have easily paid for one of the professional diplomas at Leith's that she was bleating on about not being able to afford. Or just any cookery school without such cachet. Equally she could go to university and actually learn how to think critically and do research. Either of these avenues could set her up for decent careers in kitchens or public administration or government if everything goes tits, but she's more preoccupied with buying expensive homeware than improving her long term prospects.

She really does deserve to fail. The worst part is she's probably got another sugar mummy lined up to ensure that she doesn't.

 

[Thatmoonringisdanielles]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if folks from HMRC do read here - for business and for pleasure

 

[Eurgh]

I’m sure she would consider this stuff about her taxes intrusive and claim it’s harassment etc. But if she were looking into it for a Tory MP (on Wikipedia) or the director of a company it would be very important and necessary journalism. It’s a matter of public record and we’re all accountable love.