Darts star opens up on how his ‘ignorance’ led to ‘earth-shattering’ bankruptcy

Mervyn King has candidly opened up on his experience of bankruptcy after a misunderstanding between earnings and winnings.

The former darts world no. 4 was made insolvent in March 2025 and owed HMRC £500,000 due to not paying his taxes.

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King believed the money he earned from darts were winnings instead of earnings, so didn’t make the latter known to tax authorities.

He feared losing his house and dogs, but has now made his comeback having regained his PDC Tour Card.

Speaking to TungstenTales, King was asked about how he felt when the news was made public, and opened up on his bankruptcy ordeal.

“Earth-shattering, to be fair,” King said.

“But, that was my choice. It started very, very early in my career where if they’d printed what I said in the papers, then everybody would have realised what led to it and what happened.

“Now, very early in my career, I was not under the impression that what you won was earnings, it was winnings. Now winnings, you don’t pay tax on. So, that’s the way it was. It was 500 here, 1,000 there or whatever it was, during the early part of the early years.

“And it wasn’t until I actually got to Lakeside and the words from Trina Gulliver, ‘I hope you’re looking after your money and paying your tax’. It sort of… ‘What do you mean, tax?'”

It was from that moment King decided he would look into the matter, but immediately realised he was stuck in a deep financial hole.

Seeing how much he owed, King knew he did not have the funds to pay it back at that moment but expected he would at a later date given he was playing well at the oche and accruing reasonable amounts of prize money.

Yet King failed to do that and lamented the fact he didn’t have someone advising him about what he needed to do with his finances, claiming it was ‘ignorance’ on his part.

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Knowing it was a six-figure amount, King buried his head in the sand in an attempt to make the looming nightmare disappear.

But the penny dropped during lockdown as he was forced to take on another job given darts had stopped due to the pandemic.

“I decided, ‘Okay, I’m going to contact HMRC and talk to them, and get this sorted out,'” King said.

“I got in contact with a guy in Nottingham who used to work for HMRC, that now works for people trying to sort their tax affairs out with HMRC.

“He cost me a lot of money, but he helped a lot. We went for full disclosure. I don’t know if anybody knows what that is, it’s pretty self-explanatory… they pick a date, how far they want to go back, and then they look at all your records from that date.

“We went back 20 years, and they looked at everything, all account details, the lot. Of course, when they went through everything and saw the fines and the interest, and everything else, it went (signals up and up with hand).

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“I looked at the final total and I’m like, ‘Well, unless I find a magic wand or I win the lottery, there’s no way that that’s going to get paid, I can’t, it’s impossible.

“So, they decided that they were going to make me bankrupt. My motorcycle’s gone and everything, all assets, all things I’d bought and everything else, gone.”

As part of going bankrupt, King’s accounts were emptied and frozen twice.

It left him in a tricky financial position given he had direct debits going out which were not being paid, meaning King accrued serious charges.

However, in a pleasing turn of events, King revealed he is, as of March 4, released from bankruptcy.

“So, great, it’s over, it’s a fresh start and I start again,” King said.

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It’s just making sure that everything is all proper and above board now.”

King made his return to the World Championships in December after missing the previous two tournaments, but lost in the first round.

After regaining his Tour Card, he competed at the UK Open and went through to the second round, with Luke Littler later winning the title.