building company

 

PHOTO: JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/STUFF Michael Robert Hills has been sentenced to 11 months’ home detention for tax offending.

A Christchurch building company kept on staff on the promise of plenty of earthquake repair work, and went under with $600,000 of tax unpaid.

The money had been used to keep staff employed months after they should have been laid off, the Christchurch District Court was told at Wednesday’s sentencing of 40-year-old Michael Robert Hills, who was the sole director of Mead Building Limited.

The company was incorporated in April 2009 and went into liquidation on August 12, 2014.

Hills was then prosecuted for the unpaid tax and admitted a charge of aiding and abetting the company to use the tax deductions for other purposes – paying staff – instead of paying it to Inland Revenue.

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