The owners of The Sun Inn have an impressive record of tax dodging and leaving behind millions of pounds in debts The Edinburgh Reporter can reveal.
Former employees faced an uphill struggle in recovering unpaid wages and holiday pay, as Craig Minto is a seasoned practitioner when it comes to avoiding responsibility and walking away from financial wreckage.
Casual observers won’t find the Minto name linked to Tanglewood Hospitality Ltd, the company currently running the gastro pub and inn – in January 2021 Craig Minto was disqualified from being a company director for five years due to “unfit conduct”.
That was following the little matter of running up £1.6 million in debts and the collapse of his firm CMSU Ltd (trading as The Sun Inn) which entered liquidation in June 2019.
The liquidator’s report shows the overwhelming majority of debt was owed to the British taxpayer. Unpaid VAT amounted to £903,000, PAYE arrears totalled £750,000 and corporation tax debt stood at £35,000. Trade creditors were left out of pocket to the tune of £24,000.
The report also disclosed an overdrawn director’s loan account of £571,000. Liquidators instructed solicitors to pursue recovery of the funds, but concluded that Minto had no means to repay the money and that further action would be prohibitively expensive.
However, before CMSU Ltd collapsed, Minto sold off assets valued at £96,000 to Lothian Leisure Ltd – a company owned by his father Ian Minto – allowing trading at the Sun Inn to continue under a new corporate vehicle.
Chef Ian demonstrated as much business acumen as his son – or lackadaisical approach to tax obligations – when Lothian Leisure Ltd, trading as The Sun Inn, was placed into liquidation in April 2023 with debts exceeding £560,000.
Once again the British taxpayer bore the brunt. HM Revenue & Customs was owed £371,000, while the Royal Bank of Scotland took a hit of £182,000. Smaller creditors were due £11,000. The liquidator also recorded that Ian Minto had an overdrawn director’s loan account of £270,000.
Despite the Sun Inn’s accolade of being awarded Scottish Gastro Pub of the Year 2011, the Minto family’s biggest claim to fame came much later.
In December 2023, HMRC named and shamed the Sun Inn as one of the UK’s largest “deliberate tax avoiders”, disclosing that between April 2011 to April 2017, the business failed to pay more than £770,000 in tax – with Craig Minto hit with an additional £481,000 penalty charge.
It remains unclear how much of this money, if any, has been recovered.
