Thursday, October 2, 2025 - Liverpool legend, John Barnes, has been declared bankrupt after his company ran up debts of £1.5million.
The bankruptcy notice was published in the London Gazette on
Tuesday, September 30, after a petition was filed by HM Revenue & Customs
(HMRC) in early August. It was issued in the High Court of Justice on September
23.
The Mirror reports that HMRC said John Barnes Media
Limited, the former footballer's now-liquidated company, had amassed debts
exceeding £1.5m. Liquidators’ reports show HMRC is owed £776,878 in unpaid VAT,
National Insurance, and PAYE, alongside £461,849 to unsecured creditors and a
£226,000 director’s loan.
The former Reds and England winger, capped 79
times for the Three Lions, has faced multiple bankruptcy petitions since 2010,
including one in 2023 over a £238,000 personal tax bill that was settled at the
last moment.
Barnes, who lives in Heswall, Wirral , was banned
from being a company director for three-and-a-half years in 2023 after an
Insolvency Service investigation found his firm failed to pay more than
£190,000 in corporation tax and VAT between 2018 and 2020, despite a turnover
of £441,798.
Mike Smith, chief investigator at the service, said Barnes’s
failure to ensure taxes were paid “should serve as a deterrent to other
directors”. The bankruptcy comes just a month after Barnes opened up about his
tax nightmare saying: “I’m paying what I owe.”
The former footballer, who was the first £10,000-a-week
player, said he has been paying HMRC for the past eight years after suffering
heavy losses from poorly advised investments.
He went on the All Things Business podcast to clear up what
says are misleading reports about his financial affairs.
Since 2017, Barnes said he had repaid around £2.2million and
continues to pay £10,000 each month under arrangements agreed with the tax
authority.
Speaking on the podcast, Barnes said: “I was making a lot of
money, I was the first £10,000 a week footballer and benefited from that for a
few years. Like a lot of elite sportspeople, I got burned because I trusted
people, I got caught out a couple of times and ended up losing between £1m and
£1.5m over four years.
“In 2017, I began talking to HMRC about what I could do to
repay what I owed.”
Barnes added: “I know how hard it is for people out there. I
don’t want to say there are loopholes, or that I can get away with this or
that, or have people think I can be made bankrupt and keep my assets, because
I’ve already sold everything. I don’t have any assets.
“But every time something new comes up, stories appear in
the press saying negative things about how I am not paying my taxes, even
though I’m going to court, not to be made bankrupt, but to ask for permission
to keep paying.
“Football is a working-class sport, and I don’t want hard
working people thinking I’ve got all this money and I won’t pay tax. It would
be easy to be made bankrupt because they can’t take anything else from me.”
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