Nahji Chu, the founder of Vietnamese food chain Miss Chu, says her company would not have collapsed into voluntary administration if the Australian Tax Office had granted her request for an extension to pay her tax bill.
Amidst launching a social media campaign to remind customers the MissChu business is still trading, Chu revealed to SmartCompany she asked the ATO to grant her a three-month extension to her tax bill to allow her to open two new MissChu outlets in Double Bay and Balmain in Sydney.
“[The new stores] would have allowed me to pay my bills but the Tax Office didn’t see it that way,” Chu says.
Chu says she was in the process of “restructuring the company’s corporate structure to be more conducive to tax liabilities” in late 2014 but “ran out of time” to get the right processes in place.