Inside Dancing On Ice Patsy Palmer’s financial turmoil as it’s revealed she owed £170k to taxman before she quit country
DANCING on Ice contestant Patsy Palmer’s company racked up a £170,000 tax debt before she quit the country for a new life in the US.
The former EastEnders actress, who played Bianca Jackson for 13 years, left behind her failed production company when she moved to Malibu in 2014.
Now, as Patsy, 50, prepares to take to the Dancing on Ice rink this month for a rumoured £100,000 fee, the full scale of its financial turmoil has emerged.
The debts are revealed in the final liquidator’s report into her company Frec Productions, which she ran with her husband Richard Merkell.
It was set up to produce and promote her fitness DVDs and entered a deal to launch a range of fake tan products.
However, the star was forced to enter an individual voluntary arrangement with her company’s creditors in May 2011 as the business went into liquidation.
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By then, the company, which she ran under her real name, Julie Anne Merkell, had debts of £212,808
It owed £93,043 in PAYE, £15,937 in VAT and £93,043 in corporation tax — a total of more than £202,000 to HMRC.
NatWest bank was owed £5,683 and trade creditors a further £5,000.
By the time the liquidator had finished winding up the company in 2016, £35,863 was repaid.
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Her trade creditors received £5,000 but the taxman was still £171,693 out of pocket and the bank got nothing.
Patsy personally owed the company another £400,653 as her director’s loan account was overdrawn.
It is not known how much, if any of the debt has been recovered since 2016.
Frec’s struggles followed the collapse of Patsy’s cosmetics company, Palmer-Cutler, which was dissolved in 2010.
Its last accounts in 2008 showed it was £237,160 in debt and it had an outstanding charge on it with NatWest.
As Frec was being liquidated, Patsy headed to the US to reinvent herself as a lifestuyle guru and DJ, only for the pandemic to curtail much of her work.
Now, she is back in the UK for ITV’s Dancing on Ice.
She had been training in LA with her American skating partner Matt Evers
But the star, who has children Fenton, 22, Emilia, 21 and Bertie, 12, with husband Richard, has moved her family temporarily to Windsor, Berks, while on the show.
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Her representatives last night declined to comment on what had been repaid.
ITV would not comment on contracts.
