Comic and promoter tried to appeal tax bill – but too late

Inkey Jones – the comedian who runs what is largely considered the worst comedy club in London – has lost a £3.5million case against the taxman, Chortle can reveal.

HMRC served a bankruptcy petition against the comedian, who is also known as  Daniel Peters, for that sum in June 2017.

The comic and promoter had appealed against the assessment of how much back tax he owed following an enquiry into his self-assessment returns – but made his case too late. 

An initial tribunal threw out his attempts to have his Challenge Accepted after the deadline, and that decision has now been upheld in a second tribunal at London’s Royal Courts of Justice.

The total amount of tax, interest and penalties shown in the case was approximately £1.9 million, while the bankruptcy petition served in the High Court was for about £3.5 million

Jones claimed that his tax bill was ‘excessive’ because rental income and a capital gain included in the estimated sum were incorrect, and that the taxman had both underestimated his costs and assumed that he started his club in 1996, when he argued it only began in 2011.

He was served the bill in July 2016, but did not appeal against it until a year later – the month the bankruptcy notice was lodged.

Jones claimed he had not received paperwork as it had been issued in the name of Daniel Peters, not Inkey Jones, which is now his legal name

And he also claimed that the first tribunal did not take proper account of his metal illness. Jones told that hearing that one reason why he did not deal diligently with his tax affairs was that he was suffering from depression during the period in question.

But other than his own statement, the only evidence he produced was  a letter from Dr Gurpreet Gill of  Samedaydoctor Canary Wharf dated January 22, 2018.

Despite the ‘significant limitations’ of this evidence: coming from walk-in doctor, who had not previously seen Jones, and long after the relevant time period, the first tribunal did accept that depression was a reason for the delay. The second tribunal ruled that his condition had been properly taken into account.

But although that was accepted as a reason for the delay, it did not meet the legally tougher definition of a ‘good reason’ which weighs up how the issues were managed, with the second appeal saying ‘it is not evident what other decision [the first tribunal] might reasonably have reached’.

The second tribunal – which made its ruling in late February, although the result has not previously been reported – also upheld the principle that the merits of an appeal were generally irrelevant when it came to assessing whether to accept them late or not. 

In 2015, Jones’s clubs at the Kingsway Hall Hotel in Holburn were rapped by the Advertising Standards Authority for their misleading promotion, citing press reviews and claims of award-winning comedians that could not be backed up, as well as offering bogus discounts.

The nights – simply called ‘The Comedy Club’  – advertised ‘award-winning comedy’ and further claimed: ‘Every night we have acts from TV and Bafta nominated shows.’

However the Advertising Standards Authority said those claims could not be stood up and that the shows featured ‘less well-known performers’.

It’s thought that the Bafa reference was to  Jones himself  as he worked on TooMuchTV, an animated Channel Five show that was nominated for a children’s entertainment Bafta in 2000.

His club’s website continues to contain misleading testimonies. For example it carries the Chortle logo and the quote ‘sheer bliss’. We have never been to his show, an the only time we have ever used that phrase is in a ten-year-old review of Lynn Ruth Miller at the Edinburgh Fringe when we spoke about how she was evidently performing ‘for the sheer bliss of proud self-expression’.

In a real review of the night Jones run, Paul Fleckney wrote on London Is Funny that it was ‘joyless and soulless, with a few desperate souls being paraded about while a bloke out back hoovers up all the cash’.

The night has an average of two stars on Trip Advisor, with 145 one-star reviews, most complaining about the lack of atmosphere and the amateurish of the show.

Read the full court decision on Jones’s tax affairs here.

Published: 4 Jun 2019