Borrow, working partner or give up!

daveh · #1 7th March 2010, 13:51

I'm a partner in a successful party hotel in Blackpool and have been hit with a large VAT bill from a previous investigation and reasessment. How do they get their figures! all 3 partners are straight and like to show a good turnover yet they still manage to wheedle more money from us.
So the hotel needs to borrow money because the season hasn't really started yet on top of this my managers are looking to leave to work a quieter hotel.
The banks say they need a 50/50 split, which gives very little working capital - anyone have any ideas?
We could introduce a 4th partner who would also work the hotel getting a decent wage to boot - anyone know the best way of going about this?
Finally we could just give it all up and become stress free but what will happen to the £280,000 we have tied up in it?
There has got to be a way forward!!

Thanks!

Duke Fame · #2 7th March 2010, 14:00

Negotiate with the VAT man, try and pay off over a longer period. That said, the VAT man seems to be far less open to these arrangments at the moment, it's almost as if government is telling them to make business fold so the next government has a harder time of it.

daveh · #3 7th March 2010, 15:01

Hadn't thought about that! I must admit I am becoming very cynical as will thousands of others in a similar position.

Glassglen · #4 7th March 2010, 15:35

I seem to be in a similiar situation. HMRC have asked us to pay our corperation b ill. We do not have this + the accountants only just done our year end so it gave us 2 weeks roughly to pay for it. The accountants show that we made a profit( cannot see how). Spoke to hmrc and they basically said we have 4 weeks to pay it. Yes we are owed some money from last year but they did not want to know.

daveh · #5 7th March 2010, 16:24

Sounds very similar - last tax year we made profits but never saw any of it!! Paying tax for the priviledge of running a business, which compared to other hotels in Blackpool does very well and the staff do quite well. We will also be owed money but this won't be taken into consideration. Not quite sure what the next step is.