Reform UK deputy leader and the newly-elected MP for Boston and Skegness used an offshore tax haven to shield shares he held in his property empire from the Treasury, the Mirror newspaper has revealed.
Richard Tice has admitted to setting up a family trust in the Channel Islands haven of Jersey more than three decades ago during a two-year stint working in Paris when it was “unclear” if he would “ever come back to the UK”.
But the trust remained in place when he moved back to Britain in 1991 and only moved from Jersey to the UK “five years ago .. give or take”, despite him living here throughout those 28 years.
Tice said the trust, called the RJS Tice Family Settlement, was set up to avoid being “double taxed” on his “international investments”.
In 2016, when it was still offshore in Jersey, Tice transferred one million of his shares in his UK property business Quidnet Reit Limited into the trust.
Quidnet owns £32 million-worth of commercial property in the UK and the trust now owns a 17 per cent stake which is worth around £3 million.
Tice says the beneficiaries of the trust were his three children with his ex-wife and insisted they are all UK taxpayers like him.
Responding to the news, Jo Maugham, of the Good Law Project, hit out at the self-styled Reform UK patriot, saying: “If you really love your country you pay your taxes. You want young people to be well educated and older people to be cared for. You want a decent police force and your armed forces veterans looked after. You don’t have a family trust in a tax haven.”
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