Solicitor spared prison after £36,000 Legal Aid tax fraud

10:13am Tuesday 19th December 2006

A SOLICITOR who avoided paying £36,000 in tax over ten years was spared jail yesterday.

Michael Rayner, 50, will have to remortgage his home to pay the tax, plus £20,000 prosecution costs ordered by the court.

Rayner failed to pay tax on £75,000 earned from the Legal Aid scheme between 1991 and 2001.

A qualified solicitor for 26 years, he regularly acted as an on-call solicitor, accompanying and representing offenders under the Legal Aid scheme at police stations and magistrates' courts across the region.

Rayner, who was employed by solicitors' firms in Darlington at the time, said it was his employers' responsibility to pay tax and National Insurance.

But prosecutors said he deliberately failed to notify the Inland Revenue of his second income, paid from the Legal Aid board to his home.

Rayner, who now runs his own company in Duke Street, Darlington, had told police: "Responsibility to ensure tax and National Insurance was paid was with my employer. It was not my responsibility."

He denied 11 counts of defrauding the Inland Revenue, but was found guilty at Newcastle Crown Court in July.

Yesterday, Judge Tony Lancaster sentenced him to 12 months in jail, suspended for a year.

He was ordered to pay £36,089 in outstanding tax and the prosecution costs.

Judge Lancaster said the delay in the case coming to a conclusion and the impact of the proceedings on Rayner's health meant the sentence could be suspended.

But he said: "You knew you should have declared your payments to the Inland Revenue. Particularly as a solicitor, you would have been aware of your obligation in that regard."

The court heard how Rayner, of Shetland Drive, Darlington, will have to remortgage his house to meet the payments and costs.

Martin Bethel, QC, in mitigation, said Rayner never deliberately set out to defraud the Inland Revenue.

He said: "There is no evidence of any high living or extravagant expenditure arising out of this."

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