Mervyn King declared bankrupt over huge unpaid tax bill

Darts legend Mervyn King fears he may lose his home after being declared bankrupt as a result of unpaid taxes.

King, 58, was made insolvent at the High Court of Justice in London last week and has revealed he owed over £500,000 to HMRC.

The two-time BDO World Championship finalist has racked up around £2million in career earnings, excluding sponsorships and exhibitions, but much of this was not correctly declared to the tax authorities.

King, who dropped off the PDC circuit last season, now fears he and his wife Tracey could lose their home and may struggle to accommodate their three dogs.

King told SunSport: “Tracey is worried that we’re going to lose the house. But if we do, we do.

“There’s nothing I can do about that. It’s all down to the official receiver and what he wants to do.

“I’ll have to deal with him fairly and honestly, so anything he wants to know, he can have.

“I made the move to contact them. I knew this was coming.

“It was better than them finding me and saying, ‘Excuse us Mr King, why haven’t you paid tax for 20 years?’. Because I think I’d have been straight inside.

“Now it’s all going to be cleared one way or another — whether I lose everything and the house goes. If it does, then at least it’s back to square one and I’ll start again.

“The dogs are a worry. If they take the house, we’re going to have to find somewhere to live. We’ll have to take the dogs with us.

“Over the past four or five years, I haven’t slept a lot at night, worrying about this.

“The trouble is you think the gravy train will last for ever and it doesn’t. I cannot turn back time, unfortunately.”

King has been one of the sport’s household names since turning professional in the mid 90s, winning the Winmau World Masters in 2004 and finishing runner-up at Lakeside in 2002 and 2004.

He joined the PDC in 2007, going on to reach a further seven major finals and finish runner-up in each, including the 2009 Premier League, 2012 World Grand Prix and 2020 Players Championship Finals.

The Bradwell thrower got into financial difficulty after mistakenly registering his prize money as ‘winnings’ as opposed to ‘earnings’ and began to realise the severity of the situation during the Covid pandemic when he took a job delivering parcels for Amazon.

He had also started up a construction business, but has since been forced to shut it down due to being ineligible to be a company director.

After losing his Tour Card in 2024, King has switched his attention to the PDC Challenge Tour and World Seniors – where he was beaten by Derek Coulson in Round One at the Circus Tavern last month.

The Suffolk star hopes that sharing his story will prevent other players from making the same mistakes, adding: “It’s trying to help others so they don’t end up in this position. It’s not a place to be, trust me. I wouldn’t wish this on anybody.

“I want to hopefully try to help any up-and-coming youngsters so they don’t end up in the same predicament as I did. If I can help one youngster, then it’s worth doing.

“My message is: don’t do what I did. Don’t hide your head in the sand when you realise you’re in a bit of a slump with HMRC.

“For want of a better word, I was quite naïve when it came to tax.

“Believe it or not, I actually thought with it being winnings, I didn’t have to pay tax on it, because it wasn’t earnings as such.

“I was then waiting for that big win, that really big win, so I could square everything up.

“Obviously that was not the case. From either organisation — the BDO or PDC — there was little or no help at all for guidance.

“They paid your prize money and left you to it. When I found out I should be paying tax, I was already x-number of pounds in debt to HMRC. It gets to a couple of years down the line and I’m in even more debt to HMRC.

“You think, ‘How the hell am I going to be able to pay this?’. It has been a very scary thing.”