Pepe the HorsemanElm Park KidNathStPaul You'll know far more than me on this so I'll ask you.
The owner is an extremely rich man, he can easily pay off any loan fees, wages, tax bill etc. Is he prohibited from doing so by the EFL rules or can he just not be arsed? I know that may be a silly question but I try to avoid all financial matters in football if I can.
There are a number of potential reasons:
1. This could just be pure incompetence and the tax bill hasn't been paid due to administrative oversights.
2. The owner might be facing difficulties in accessing/transferring capital from China. Either due to government/legal interference or decisions that he has taken which has 'tied up' his wealth.
3. The owner might simply have decided for whatever reason to stop funding the club. Maybe he's had enough - maybe he has other priorities.
This has nothing to do with EFL restrictions.
If it's 3 what happens next?
The owner can choose to put the club into administration, at which point independent administrators takeover and will look to sell the club to new owners in order to pay off taxes and other outstanding debts. This is what happened with Derby, and it requires new owners paying enough to satisfy whatever HMRC demand to clear the tax bill AND our obligations to pay a certain percentage of our footballing debts (I forget the figure). All non-footballing debts (including what the owner has lent us) would be wiped away. We'd have to accept a 12 point deduction for next season (along with whatever else the EFL are going to give us).
If the owners don't don't that then i'm not 100% sure. I think that HMRC can just wind up the club and assets sold to pay out the tax bill/debts.