KING FEARS HE MAY LOSE HOME

By Aaron Nijjar  

MERVYN KING fears he may lose his home and struggle to care for his three dogs after being declared bankrupt. 

The two-time Lakeside World Championship finalist revealed he has owed “north of £500,000” to HMRC after falling into financial difficulty due to unpaid taxes. 

For the past two decades, King admits: “I hid my head in the sand,” as the debts mounted up.  

Last Tuesday the oche veteran was made insolvent at the High Court of Justice in London. 

Now he and wife Tracey are concerned about their living arrangements following this judgement. 

If they are forced to move, the Norfolk-based couple will need to find a home that can accommodate their three large dogs—a Pyrenean Mountain Dog, a Pyrenees-Newfoundland cross, and a Golden Retriever. 

He 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.” 

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, ‘The King’ was one of the biggest names in darts. He reached the Lakeside World Championship final twice, losing to Australian Tony David in 2002 and Andy Fordham in 2004. 

However, much of the money he earned during this period—particularly after moving to the PDC in 2007—was not properly declared to the tax authorities. 

World No. 136 King mistakenly believed his income was classified as ‘winnings’ rather than ‘earnings,’ leading to significant financial trouble. 

The situation came to a head during the Covid pandemic when he took a job delivering parcels for Amazon. It was then that he fully realised he was heading towards bankruptcy and has been “trying to survive since.” 

In an attempt to rebuild, King set up a construction business, but he has since had to shut it down as he is ineligible to be a company director. 

Now, his focus turns to making money through darts once again, competing on the Challenge Tour and the Seniors Darts circuit after losing his professional Tour Card at the end of 2024. 

King is sharing his story now in the hope of preventing others—particularly young players—from making the same mistakes. 

He added: “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 naive 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.” 

Image by Taylor Lanning.