9:11 am, January 22, 2026
Automotive firms and workers have been fined a staggering £254,000 after racking up unpaid tax bills of close to £450,000.
HMRC regularly publishes lists naming and shaming companies and individuals who have ‘deliberately defaulted’ on their tax bills, in the hope that it may put other off doing the same.
The latest list, published late in 2025, includes entires from across the automotive industry, from sales to car repairs.
The biggest fine was issued to Jeffrey James, of Warwick, who worked in ‘Car sales and waste management’. HMRC says that he avoided £130,529.81 in tax over three separate periods from 2010 to 2012; 2013 to 2016 and 2019 to 2022.
His actions resulted in a penalty of £66,724.59, but he was far from the only figure in the motor trade to feature on the list.
There was also a fine for the Tottenham-based used car dealer Fast Drive Ltd, which was fined £84,175 over an unpaid tax bill of £120,250 between August 2023 and April 2024.
Elsewhere, Stanway Automotive Limited – a repair centre in Colchester – was slapped with a £53,614.80 fine for defaulting on £89,358 of tax between Mar 2020 and December 2022 and Birmingham car dealer Carl Jobe was penalised £29,321.62 for his own £57,212.97 tax bill which dated between April 2010 and April 2015.
Finally, James Hurry who runs a car body repair business in Aldershot, had an unpaid bill of £48,866.28 between April 2021 and April 2024. He was penalised £20,523.82.
Overall, the quintet racked up a tax bill of £446,217.06, for which they were penalised £254,359.83.
The tax office says that the defaulters list only includes firms penalised under civil procedures and does not include criminal convictions for tax fraud.
Offenders details will remain available on the government’s website for the next year the authorities try to ‘encourage defaulters to engage with HMRC’.
On its website, tax office says of the lists: ‘HMRC will only publish the details where the taxpayer has not made a full and immediate disclosure when HMRC started to investigate or prior to any investigation.
‘The list relates to deliberate defaulters who’ve been dealt with using civil proceedings.
‘The list does not contain details of criminal convictions of those found guilty of a criminal offence in open court and therefore the verdict and sentence is a matter of public record.’
