A Southland woman, whose company was involved in a programme providing school lunches, was sentenced to home detention on tax charges.
Debra Lee Monteith was sentenced in the Invercargill District Court on June 3rd to 11 months home detention on a single representative charge of aiding and abetting her company in failing to account for PAYE between March 2021 and February 2024.
Monteith’s company, Lee 19, was primarily involved in food catering including the Ministry of Education's Ka Ora, Ka Ako Healthy School lunches and catering at the Alliance Lorneville meat processing plant.
In 2019, Lee 19 registered as an employer and began paying its workers. The next year several employees phoned Inland Revenue stating their KiwiSaver deductions were not being paid.
No PAYE returns were filed until 2020 when returns for seven PAYE periods were returned all at once with $82,894.86 (excluding penalties and interest) immediately due and payable. Monteith entered into an instalment arrangement in 2020 for the debt, but this was cancelled in 2022 because of missed payments.
Then the company stopped paying PAYE entirely from March 2021 until February 2024. The PAYE not accounted for over this period totalled $801,928.79.
Monteith told Inland Revenue the PAYE was used to keep the company afloat and pay for food costs. Her personal expenses were paid out of the company’s finances and her groceries were taken from the company’s pantry.
Monteith benefitted by just over $300,000 between 2020 and 2024, although she wasn’t otherwise taking a salary from the company. Lee 19 also applied for and received more than $780,000 in COVID-19 support money from various schemes.
The company, at Monteith’s direction, was receiving significant taxpayer support while at the same time not meeting its own tax obligations.
In March 2024, Lee 19 was placed into liquidation. Monteith, who ran four other companies since the late 1980s, was made bankrupt in 2013.